It’s here. The iPad. Stephen Fry reviews. I am reduced to a Homer-esque gurgle.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
It’s here. The iPad. Stephen Fry reviews. I am reduced to a Homer-esque gurgle.
I still haven’t made up my mind whether to get one. Sigh, I probably will, even if I don’t need it!
an iphone might be a fun and useful thing to have, but why would i want a smartphone the size of a notepad?
OTOH, a tablet PC might be a fun and useful thing to have (although, if they’re really so useful as all that, how come they haven’t had their big breakthrough already? they’ve been around long enough), but why would i want a tablet PC with a walled-garden, single-source, single-tasking OS like a smartphone might be saddled with?
Argh!! What have I done!?!?
Yesterday I received an unexpected cash bonus for my work on a recent project, and rushed home to happily promise my that we would blow it celebrating the first anniversary of our 25th anniversary, coming up in June.
Only now, after it’s too late, does it dawn on me that this award, after taxes, will be almost exactly what it would’ve cost me to buy an iPad.
Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!
BTW, that review was awesome; is there nothing Stephen Fry doesn’t do well?
The Ipad is just an amazing idea! All it needs to be perfect would be a small form keyboard that folds to protect the screen and improve data input, a camera, the ability to multi-task, 3g/wifi/cat5 and USB options for connectivity (instead of the proprietary system) and the ability to load any OS I want instead of being stuck with theirs.
Oh wait, they have them. They are called netbooks.
Ah well, can’t win em all Mr. Jobs.
Yeah I’m still not so excited about it.
If they add camera tethering and a few other photo tools to it, then maybe.
Hehe. Didn’t take long for the Techies to start the hatin’.
I’ll be getting one. It’ll be a great way to show a portfolio.
It’s not meant to be a netbook. Which is just a wimpy little laptop. The iPad is meant to be something else, IS something else.
Apple will sell millions of them.
I don’t see what the big deal is about the iPa…
SHINY!!
And a bicycle would be perfect if only it had a sidecar, a really loud engine, and could go 80 MPH!
I’m not a techie. I’m happy to hate on Apple just for being so unbearably smug.
@Givesgoodmail.
The Fry review restated with economy.
David B (looks in vain for a ‘notworthy’ smiley)
Interestingly, my prejudice runs so deep that when I read Job has had a liver transplant, my first thought is “Where did he buy it?”
well duh, they’ve got apple logos on ’em. and congratulations to the stockholders for the profits about to be realized — but is the ipad actually good for something that nothing else doesn’t already do just as well?
(yes, netbooks are wimpy little laptops. they can’t do everything that “serious” laptops do, but they don’t have to, because they’re aimed at a specific niche of utility which they fill fairly well — very portable, yet still general-purpose, computers for to access the internet while on the move from. what’s the ipad’s target use case?)
Hooray, a useless, overpriced computer that lacks even USB support!
Buying an expensive, single purpose electronic device so you don’t need to shell out $20 on a portfolio (or $.50 for a CD prospective clients could open on their PC)? Huh.
It’s not “something else”, it’s an oversized iPhone. Which is great if you want an oversized iPhone, but acting like it’s a device the likes of which the world hasn’t seen is kind of the main reason techies and non-techies alike tend to hate on Apple/Apple acolytes.
Was anyone else disappointed to find that this review wasn’t written by Stephen Fry the actor?
I was. It would have won the non-sequitur of the year award. And I could have imagined it being read in that wonderful, wry- yet- soothing, “Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” voice.
Another dream shattered. Am retreating to my boudoir to weep inconsolably.
I’m much more impressed with Notion Ink’s Adam.
I will need to wait until summer instead of running out to grab an iPad right now, however…
http://www.slashgear.com/notion-ink-adam-fan-renders-stoke-our-interest-1073624/
Call me a real hard sell. I’m holding out on the iPad until there’s a good nonogram app. Or I get an Intel-based Mac so’s I can program my own (stupid first-gen Motorolla-based Mac Mini…).
Srsly, though: If this thing can give the Kindle a run for its money — and thus remove the monopolous stranglehold Amazon has on the e-book market (and the fucked-up shit they get away with as a result, like editing or deleting books after people have bought them) — then I’m in favor for that reason alone.
@Sili #9: Amen.
Hahahahaha!
I think Apple (and Stephen Fry) are full of shit is what I think. I notice the use of “microcomputer” but not PC. No mention of Mac games either..oh wait, they don’t have any.
Apple fan boys make me laugh to be honest. The company is one giant rip-off control freak. Ever since the days of the Apple II, they have been overpriced and anti the idea that a computer can be user optimised (btw, remember the Apple Lisa at $10,000?). Confusers for people who don’t understand confusers.
Same with the idiotPhone and now the i’m-an-even-bigger-idiotPad.
I’ll stick with my gaming PC, laptop and android OS smart phone thanks.
It was written by Stephen Fry the actor.
@Greta, post 15
Was it not Stephen Fry. If not, it sure fooled me. He’s long been an Apple fan, it read like Fry.
Are you sure it wasn’t him?
Oh, and happy deity on a stick day (no, not Steve Jobs hanging up there…there is no god, so that ain’t going to happen ;-)
@Greta Christina: It seems like it was written by the Stephen Fry we all know and love.
From the last page of the review: “Fry is a writer, actor and broadcaster. His films include Wilde, Gosford Park, V for Vendetta and, most recently, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, in which he plays the Cheshire Cat.”
Sounds like the right guy to me. And I assumed from the start that it would be him – I’ve heard him express his great love for Apple before.
I still think he’s a good man though, despite such shortcomings ;-)
Haha. Such irrational hate of a device none have even used.
The reviewers who have used it, like it, if not love it.
The iPad is not over priced. How much was the kindle going for?
Let’s see.
It’s a computer than will only run software that the maker allows it to run.
That software must be purchased through the maker’s store.
It can be installed only through the maker’s proprietary bloated software which must be installed on the users’ desktop PCs.
In fact, the memory and storage space of the device can only be accessed by this proprietary software.
And when following the mandatory installation of this proprietary software to their PCs, it also installs OTHER software that is not needed nor necessarily wanted by the user… and THAT software (without asking) changes your system preferences so that it is the preferred application for its use, regardless of whether you wanted it to be or not.
And should you try to uninstall it, it sneakily leaves behind all sorts of malicious crap that you have to be a tech wizard to find and delete.
Microsoft (a shitty company also) tried just a fraction of this kind of control with its media player and was lambasted for it and the player was rejected.
They tried just a fraction of that degree of control with their 2nd most recent operating system, the system was panned and rejected.
They tried just a fraction of that degree of control over applications on their operating system, were rightly criticised and had to pay millions in anti-trust judgements.
Apple does it, gets haled as visionary and revolutionary.
Steve Jobs is truly an evil genius.
He has found a way to take the individuals MOST likely to resist the bullshit consumer culture, get them to line up to buy a consumer product advertised essentially as a fashion accessory, as Calvin Klein underwear, as a “must have to be a cool person” bauble..
He gives these baubles a profit margin higher than any in the industry, startingly, sickening overpriced, makes his company the most obscenely profitable.
And gets the normally skeptical, anti-consumer suckers who bought his fashion accessory to wear them by the millions, talk about them by the millions, BLOG about them by the millions as an example of how they’re such a free-thinking, counter-culture, anti-materialistic independent individuals.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/04/01/blackberry.loses.ground.in.jd.power.without.touch/
Just sayin’.
iPad – yeck! A waste if you ask me. At leased as of now. A couple problems – first if you’re looking at the 3G version – DON’T! 3G is on it’s way out, pretty quickly here. LTE 4G will be the new wireless broadband within the next year. I recommend anyone who thinks this is of use to them, to wait for the second generation to come out.
I, personally will wait to see either the MS courier (which looks WAY better, surprisingly from the leaks http://gizmodo.com/5381011/microsoft-couriers-swipes-snips-and-scribbles-the-leaked-interface ) or the soon to come out eee tablets from ASUS – either the Chrome/Android or Windows versions (if one comes out with Android, I’ll be all over that) http://gizmodo.com/5506113/asus-preparing-one-google-tablet-one-windows
Or Notion Inks Adam.
My ¢2.
It looks like a giant i-phone to me. And a pad at that price should come with wings…
Your screechy, incoherent rant certainly gave me a chuckle. You’re so very very angry about the tools someone uses! Good job being indistinguishable from the “fan boys” you disparage, right down to the childish name-calling.
Wow. Jafa. You actually believe that crap?
They are not sickeningly overpriced. They’re carefully priced. There’s tons of other computer makers they sell cheap hardware. Apple chooses not to compete with them.
Apple is a company with balls. Consumers buy shitty products all the time. No one is twisting their arm. Design, UI, quaility of build all matters. When people use their products, they’re happy about it. It doesn’t bite them in the ass or let them down.
It’s crazy how some people just don’t get it and turn it into something else.
DAMN BMW for making me want their cars that I can’t afford! They are evil!
Damn! For a moment I thought that was Homer of the Odysseus. I should have known better – these days it’s a Fox edukeshin rather than a Classical Education.
@Greta
Just out of curiosity: Were any of those reviewers not Apple fanbois beforehand?
There was an ‘interesting’ article in Politiken about the Ipad. One the bright, young things that are the intended audience whined about how he felt that Apple was being unkind and pissing their loyal
fanboiscustomers up and down the back. But of course he was still gonna get any new product they bring out. Seriously, I wish I was exaggerating.Might be worth buying if it cost $200-$300 less. As it stands, you seriously might as well just get a fucking laptop. It’ll do everything the iPad can, plus, y’know, multitask, run Flash, support USB, and all the other things that comprise basic functionality.
The iPad might as well be a brick for all it really does. There are REAL COMPUTERS that are just as portable as the iPad, that will do everything it does better than it does, for the same price.
For all Fry’s gushing about posies and pixies and how fun of a time he had with his old Mac, he barely talks at all about the actual iPad. Probably because he knows that it’s just a shiny toy, so he has nothing to actually say about it.
I probably won’t be buying one (a resolution that will probably last until I actually have one in my hot sweaty palms).
I can think of a few of its limitations; it’s as large as the Kindle DX (and that itself is a bit unwieldy). It works on a different format (although Amazon is working on applications that will allow Kindle content to be displayed on the iPad). I have gone too far down the Kindle pathway. The Kindle for Mac application allows me to read books on my laptop already, and if I wanted a new useless piece of technocandy I’d buy a new larger faster laptop.
On second thoughts, I want one.
Well, it’s a free market. They know full well that plenty of people will pay full price. Why on Earth would they not exploit that customerbase?
LOLs @ #30.
Maybe the fact I was (among other subjects) a computer science teacher, who had to use networked Macs in one school, has made me all bitter and twisted.
And don’t patronise me, I’m damn near sixty and no fan boy of any technology. I just don’t like Steve Jobs, his company or gullible fools who buy his shtick and fawn all over the company…like you perhaps. Do I detect the hurt feelings of an Apple user?
Diddums.
Couldn’t Stephen have taken another three or four pages to say nothing?
Early Saturday morning, I shall be standing at Southcenter Mall (you know where that is, P.Z.!), waiting….. My reservation was made the day they started taking them.
And Waynerobinson4, a Kindle is like an iPad except one is full color, has apps, can surf the internet, play with photos and email and a few dozen other things including letting you read e-books; the other has 16 shades of gray (wow!) and holds e-books. $10 in difference in price between the two lowest end units. :D
http://suregottold.com/images/ipadjunk.png
That’s all that needs to be said about the iPad.
FBReader lets me read ebooks in a number of different file formats, right on my netbook (or any other computer), for free. i haven’t bothered buying any kindle-format ebooks, but online sources tell me they can be easily enough converted to mobipocket format, which FBReader understands. the kindle’s got some advantages (great screen, long battery life) but for my money it’s horrendously overpriced.
don’t get me wrong, i’d like a tablet-like ebook reader thingy if it had an e-ink screen and its batteries ran all day. but its reader software had better beat FBReader’s functionality spec sheet, and i’m not paying a cent over $100 for it unless it can also compete with my netbook for general purpose computing use. standard USB connectivity is not optional, either way.
I just googled it to find out the cost – not announced in the UK yet, apparently. For the US price, I can buy a good laptop, and get change. I went to the guided tour, and got told I needed to download Quicktime, ‘available for Mac or Windows’. This linux user was not impressed. I’ll pass.
It’s quite sad that Stephen Fry, after an inspiring defense of Free (as in speech) software (here: http://www.gnu.org/fry/ ), falls for the charms of the least open computing platform in the world.
Tablets and smartphones are indeed the future of personal computing and it’s our chance to opt for a free and open future in which no company (no matter how cutely it refers to its headquarters) determines what we can or cannot do with our devices, how we can communicate with the world, and how much all that is worth.
Can’t we all just get along? I mean, it’s a computing device. Are some people buying something they don’t need or have very little use for? Yes. Are some people waiting for a device that, for all intents and purposes, is inferior to other devices already out there? Yes.
Does that mean no one could possibly want this device? No. Does that mean that there is some objective standard with which we are judging and therefor our judgments are objectively true? No.
Ok, enough with the question and answer. If you need a device like this, shop around to see if this is the one you want (there are others out there). If not then who cares? Too many feelings getting hurt. (Who knew you were such a sensitive bunch)
Fil. You just sound like a cranky old man. You seem to be proud of that.
I’m a designer. I’ve used Macs since 1987. It’s all I’ve ever used. I’ve never seen a reason to use anything else.
Are my feelings hurt? Why would they be? You seem to have an irrational hatred of a company that makes things you don’t want. And you seem to think that only idiots buy their products.
It’s out of touch thinking. Similar to Steve Balmers.
I’m always impressed by the rationalizations people will make to avoid admitting that they kind of want something… badly… it really just sounds like your trying to convince yourself that you don’t really want one.
I’m particularly amused by some of the “it doesn’t let me do this, it doesn’t let me do that!” comments. great, don’t get one. I understand that hp makes a good one, and there are netbooks galore that people keep saying have more power or something…
I work for a software company, I write software. I have an iPhone and lament it being too small for some of the things that I do with it. I don’t want a work computer for home. I have other hobbies. this thing is just about the ideal size and utility for what I want this sort of device to be, and I’ve wanted something like it for a long time. apple sells an experience that is at its core “low maintenance” and for the most part, I trust apple to remain true to that ideal, and I’m willing to pay extra for it. I didn’t buy games until I had the iPhone for a while, and I suspect I will get a few for the pad when it arrives.
the major difference between microsoft and apple adding software to their os is a matter of motivation. apple adds software that they think will improve your experience of using their software. microsoft adds software that will add to their experience of you using their software. that little difference is what instigates (or prevents) lawsuits.
I will be getting one. I think it will be a delightful thing. I’m even happy it lacks Flash. and I have a camera in my phone. and because I have cloud storage, the picture I take on one ends up on the other, and really, aiming a thing the size of an ipad just looks kind of silly.
for those who will vituperate against people who want one, keep it to yourself (or at least keep it civil.) you are not required to buy one, and there are alternatives, help yourself.
doesn’t have a usb port? see above remark about camera. with dropbox or similar, most of your stuff doesn’t even have to reside on the machine you’re on at all. doesn’t have an optical drive? my dvd drive in my laptop broke 6 months ago. haven’t missed it. most of my video comes down the wire or aerial now.
it doesn’t suck, it just sucks for you.
@37
Hold on. It’s not such a ‘free market’ when one company get’s to dictate price, right? Just trying to understand this whole ‘free market’ idea. It’s an odd thing – Amazon has been charging $9.99 for most of their books, and sometimes Amazon will turn no profit on an ebook sale. Not too sure why they’d do that other than to have standard pricing. But the fact remains, Apple is creating contracts with publishers that will force Amazon to follow the same pricing model if they want to sell books from said publisher.
Granted, most publishers are on board – Apple allows the publisher to set the price, then they take a 30% cut. Amazon currently purchases each digital ‘copy’ and then sets their own price (normally $9.99).
I used Macs back in college, and found them irritating as hell. Which may have been the way the college computer lab set them up, but they chapped me serious. I still have a few disks with stuff I wrote that I cannot now access.
I bought a used Mac at a garage sale last year, to try and reconcile, and found it just as frustrating. But that may have been because it was out of date. I recycled it.
I bought an iTunes download card to try downloading music legally. I had to install iTunes, register and all, then still couldn’t get the last of the money off the card because it wasn’t enough to buy an entire song. The songs weren’t MP3s, dammit, so they had to stay in the computer. Then my computer crashed, and iTunes locked all the songs when I reinstalled. I deleted iTunes and forgot the songs.
My daughter bought an iPod, against my advice, and the whole damned iTunes nightmare started over again. I put that shit on a new, separate user account in my computer, and it hunted down all those old songs I bought and converted them to some other format. I won’t let it into my own user account, so I still can’t listen to the songs.
I want MP3s on my phone and a laptop in my bag. I will not be buying an iPad.
Arrr.
Odd, I have no desire for an iPad. It won’t replace dedicated ereaders (which we own), since it can’t compete with the thousands of page turns offered by eInk technology. While it may contribute to challenging the kindle, more important are the plethora of actual readers hitting the market, without ties to amazon and able to read all formats.
For fucks sake people.
So much for rational thinkers. It’s just like Kwok posting Amazon reviews for books he hasn’t read.
Wow, way to contradict myself.
then
Does not compute. I guess the point is still valid though, Apple strong arming amazon to follow their pricing model so they can’t be under cut.
I’m sticking with my kindle. Not least because when PZ’s book comes out, I’ll have the first signed copy. (I didn’t have anything for him to sign, so he signed my kindle.)
At the very end of the review, Fry hits on the main reason that I’m interested in the iPad (ugh, the name is revolting though):
It’s the closest thing humanity has developed so far to “The Guide.”
I hope someone will make an iPad case that says “Don’t Panic” on it.
I used to hate on apple products. Then I used one.
Who cares how open the platform is? I mean really, do you realise how small a proportion of the market, nay, population techies like that are? It is probably the least significant factor in a successful (and damn good!) computing product when it comes to consumers. I tell you know, I don’t care whether I can run linux on my Mac or not, I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I could. And you know what? It doesn’t matter! Because it does a million and one other things better than any laptop on the market!
Apple products really do have a feel and useabilty (real word??) to them that is unmatched and I reckon the iPad will do that too. It will be faaaaaaaaar more portable than a laptop (they’re too awkward to pull out on a Manchester bus!), much more enjoyable to use than a netbook (face it, they’re just slower cheaper laptops), and a lot easier to work with than an iPhone.
Yeah it’s a big iPhone, but the iPhone is too small!
D’oh! Well, now I feel like a dope. Oh, well. It wasn’t the first time, and won’t be the last.
Well, for sure, there are quite rational reasons against the iPad.
Pricing of books, however, isn’t; far too much of the argument depends on static pricing of books or on pricing behavior that isn’t actually observed in the real world.
@eveedream
Setting a wallpaper for it would be better. Everytime you turn it on, there it is. :)
Hmmm…wonder if there’s an iPhone size one out there.
@49 Menyambal
You actually can buy DRM free MP3’s from iTunes, but they cost more. I left the iPod/iTunes scene a few years ago and fled over to Zune, which isn’t much different – some songs are available as DRM free MP3’s some are DRM’d WMA files.
The big issue I had was that when I made the switch, DRM free MP3’s were not really around in the iTunes store and I had a pretty good size collection of music, much of which was m4p’s from iTunes. These can’t be played on the Zune so it looked like I was out a goof 30+ GB of music I’d paid for. BUT, there’s a solution. I used a program called SoundTaxi (not too sure if it’s still around or what), but it essentailly “Dubs” the DRM’d music – it silently ‘plays’ the song in the background, at a dub speed and re-records it as a new MP3. Automatically transfers all the ID3 tags and meta data. I didn’t notice a change in quality either as the samplign rate can be set quite high.
Needless to say, though, even at dub speed it took about 4 days to convert my entire iTunes collection
JJ,
So you’re saying that Apple will somehow stop publishers from putting their books on Kindle and other e-readers?
Heh. I guess it is time that the EU non-trust commission gets turned on Apple, now that they’re done playing with Microsoft.
While I drool a bit over the iPad, I would need to do much more traveling than I do for me to consider it worthwhile. It looks like a great device to take on an plane, or have at meetings and the like. I can understand PZ’s fascination…
Steve Jobs’s greatest feat is the fact that he’s still alive. The man looks like a walking skeleton, has a liver transplant and has survived pancreatic cancer (so far). One thing is for sure, American health care works when you’re a billionaire.
nomen-nescio,
Oh, thanks for the heads-up about FBReader. I didn’t know about it, *and I’m Ubuntu powered*.
Aren’t you supposed to be off crying somewhere?
@ Sili,
Well, it’s not 100% confirmed, but essentially if Amazon doesn’t switch over to the new pricing model, publishers are going to stop selling to Amazon. This mode was created and is being pushed by Apple. They do not want Amazon to be able to set their own price. Most publishers are on Apples side, as it’s likely to increase their profits on ebooks as well
What this does, though, is make it so that Amazon can’t choose how much to sell a book for. Gives all pricing to the publishers and not the seller.
Ever seen a netbook? You need to take out at leased 8 of those a’s above. My netbook fits in my glove box. It’s tiny. And has a keyboard, dual boots into Linux and Windows, supports flash (albeit not so well in Linux), that elusive multitasking, has a front facing camera, USB ports, VGA output…
But seriously, this thing isn’t marketed towards someone like myself. I’m sure it’ll be great for those who have a use for it.
What andrewsinnott said. I never cease to be amazed when people dis on Mac fans because we’ve been seduced by how easy and pleasant Mac products are to use. Yes. That’s the point. The overwhelming majority of the population is not made up of software designers and techies. Most of us don’t know how our computers work, and don’t care. We choose our computer products the same way we choose cars and clothes and dishwashers and food and shampoo and just about every other consumer product in our lives: a combination of function and ease/ pleasantness/ fun of use.
I’m not a techie. When people start with tech talk, I look at them blankly and say, “My cat’s name is Mittens.” But I (a) am not an idiot and (b) use computers and computer products for more than half my my waking life. Macs do 95% of what I want and expect them to do… and they (usually) do it easily, and the experience is usually simple and often downright fun. Why is that a bad thing?
To be honest, I can’t work up enough energy to care about the iPad itself.
The one thing that pisses me off is that Apple forced the publishers to sign contracts stating that they would not sell their books on other websites for less than what Apple will (Source: ArsTechnica). This means that the publishers have to renegotiate their contracts with Amazon, B&N and all the independent sites out there, and that all of us who already OWN eBook readers will be seeing prices jump 50% or more.
What Apple is saying with this move is “We have such control of the market that we can punish people who don’t own Apple products!” Someone should file a multimillion dollar antitrust lawsuit. I can’t; I’ll be spending all my spare cash on more expensive eBooks.
So, yes, I’m anti-Apple. But only because they’re assholes.
Danish publishers did that for ages – as well as limiting who could and could not sell their books.
Got them into trouble with the EU, and now it’s perfectly common to buy books at the supermarket.
So, if they weren’t allowed to do it, I doubt that other publishers will be. As I said, it’s gonna be fun to see Apple stew. There’s not surprisingly already fuss about their monopoly model for the Iphone – the inability to change providers really don’t sit well with the regulators – nor does the attempts to increase contracts to more than six months. As I understand it the only reason they’re getting away with it, is that they have less than 30% of the market for smartphones in Denmark. So if they get more succesful, they’ll end up being fined if they don’t allow for other networks to operate on their handsets.
Of course, the Humana chain who sells Apple hardware here in Denmark has hella bad reputation when it comes to repairs and refunds, so my dislike for Appleware has been stoked for a long time.
Disclamer: I do in fact own an Ipod mini bought off Ebay, because the other mp3-players I’d tried (when buying new) had more background noise. I think.
JJ (#65), I have seen a netbook. Yeah it has a keyboard. That doubles its size in use, and thickness in a bag. Oh and doesn’t do the weight any favours. The primary selling point of a netbook is that it’s a mobile web browsing product. The interactive touch screen of the iPad will make it far superior for that function. Why would I want to use a tiny little trackpad to coax my cursor towards a link when I can just tap on it? The majority of typing to be done on this thing is gonna be the odd web address or search term. The keyboard would be in the way most of the time.
So I’ll keep at leasT eight of my eight a’s thank you very much!
@itsumademootaku
That’s my biggest gripe with the iPad. I could care less about it, except them pushing their ebook pricing model.
I hope the EU does take them to task on it. Apple’s starting a lot of shit on this side of the pond right now – going after HTC (‘Cause they can’t go after MS, Google, Nokia or Palm) on claims of patent infringement on some very very vague patents (such as slide to unlock). If they get HTC handsets banned in the US it’ll be a sad day for innovation. HTC makes some of the best handsets around, and since they made the Nexus One, Apple wants to get them, bad.
See here
Unless I misunderstand, the new model is that producers (in this case publishers) establish the price for their product, and if the reseller sells it for that full price, they get 30%. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Wait, I think there’s a word for that, isn’t there? Something like, what… oh yeah… retail.
So those bastards at Apple are going to let producers price their own goods, and then resell at a markup? As opposed to Amazon’s plan of selling every item at the same price, regardless of what its producer wants to charge? Ahhh, now I understand why Apple’s “new” model is so ebil! </snark>
Actually, it’s a bit amusing: The way Amazon sells e-books looks a lot like the way Apple sells songs, while the way Apple sells e-books looks a lot like the way Amazon sells (non-e)books. It’s a funny ol’ world, innit?
Why all the hate on Apple? Go anywhere on the Interwebz where there’s a pro-Apple article and the haters come a’runnin’ with the usual whine about how Apple products are overpriced.
We’ve used DOS boxes, Macs, WinPCs and even ran a Linux distro back in the day. For our money, Mac’s are easier to use, and more reliable.
Sure, we could spend hours of productivity dicking around with a Windows box trying to get it to work properly, but why would we want to do that when we could be getting some actual work done instead — that’s been our experience and why we’d rather pay more for a Mac that has historically, been more reliable for general computer use.
As for the iPad, it looks cool, but we’ve got no use for one and we don’t like the fact that some of the critical functionality is tied to the desktop computer, like a frickin’ leash — just like how the iPod is tied to iTunes. That sucks.
See haters, you can like Apple products and still retain the ability to critize them.
JJ: “I could care less about it”
Sorry but every time I hear that I just wanna scream IT MAKES NO CONTEXTUAL SENSE! By saying you could care less about some you are suggesting that there’s a possibility you already care some significant amount. The correct contextual phrase is “I couldn’t care less” for reasons that I hope are obvious.
!
Ahem — some clarifications:
– It was Amazon strong-arm tactics that led to the publishers pushing for an “agency model” (where the publisher sets the retail price) — this was prior to signing contracts with Apple.
– Because the iPad is at heart a general-purpose computing device, it will actually be the most flexible e-reader available and have the largest library, as there are announced apps not only for Apple’s iBookstore, but for the Kindle store, the Kobo store, and the Barnes and Noble store.
– In addition, the Apple iBook app will happily display un-DRMed ePub format books, and let you load such books onto the iPad. This includes all the Project Gutenberg books that are in that format.
– The music purchased on iTunes is not DRMed, and this only after Apple fought the music labels in order to make this change. The music purchased there can also be easily converted to vanilla MP3s.
(A happy Apple user since 1984.)
@andrewsinnott (69)
Well we’ll have to agree to disagree then. My netbook is quite thin, and very light. A keyboard doesn’t add all that much thickness – the hardware that’s under the keyboard is still in the iPad, same with a screen, so were talking the with of the keyboard itself and the extra bezel. I really can’t think of a situation where it would be ‘harder’ to get out than the iPad. Believe me I use it on planes all the time.
Like I said, this thing isn’t for me – I wouldn’t be able to get my work done without a physical keyboard or mouse – but that has more to do with what I need a computing device for (my job). My Droid can cover all the other things
Because hating on Bill Gates is soooooooo Noughties.
After all, Gates is trying to eradicate measles and malaria. What has Job done lately? Aside from getting a new liver, apparently. (What happened to the old one – and how did he manage to get one so fast? I thought there was a shortage of organs. /wellpoisoning)
Quoted for Truth©!
I don’t hate Bill Gates. Steve Balmer on the other hand…
Nah. Don’t hate him either. I get too much joy from when he says something stupid about a new Apple product and then has to eat his hat a year later. I can see him turning red in the face already.
A reaction to the surgery to remove his pancreatic tumor. A known untoward reaction…
Another expensive toy I won’t be buying.
Apple fanbois whining about me dissing Apple in 3…2…1…
@andrewsinnott
Sorry your are correct with the grammar. My apologies. I find myself saying that and thinking that doesn’t work. I also find myself saying at work “lets see if we can’t fix this” when I mean “Let’s see if we can fix this”
@ Tulse
Yes, Amazon originally was using bad tactics to get publishers to follow their model – but Apple’s doing the same so that no one can sell books for less than they do. No excuses for either. I dislike Apples model more than Amazons.
Regarding DRM music – I haven’t used the iTunes store in ages. But you are correct, it was never Apples idea to introduce DRM. DRM was created to appease record labels that were very fearful of piracy if they went to online stores (which was a bad move – DRM made many people who would buy an non-DRM track just go illegal routes to get their music). Do you know if they still charge more for songs w/o DRM? They used to, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this has changed.
Congratulations! You’ve discovered idiom. And I think you mean “inherent sense” or summat. In context everybloodyone knows what is meant by “I could care less”.
Well, personally I’m going to buy one for the use of my 7-year old son (probably for his eighth birthday in June).
Sounds a bit extravagant, I know. A kid getting an iPad when an iPod Touch would give just as many games, or even a DS or an old-fashioned baseball and glove… (well, rugby ball here in Oz).
But you see, my son is autistic and non-verbal. One of the few therapy treatments that has worked – and that only partially – is facilitated communication – holding his hand while he spells out words. Yeah, thats prone to abuse, but in my son’s case it’s purely keeping him on task by holding his hand at the right level. I’ve done it myself and I can assure you that’s all I do – my son does the pointing himself. Right now we use a laminated printout of a keyboard for most things.
What I want the iPad for is a good text-to-speech app. I use one on my iPhone with my son, but the keys are too small – he can’t hit them very easily. But even with that obstacle, he likes to use it – hearing the words he has typed read out gives him a thrill, and the feedback on his spelling (when the word doesn’t sound right) helps him too.
(I also want a good flashcard app – for PECS – but I haven’t found for the iPhone. May end up writing my own)
The iPad doesn’t aim to replace the desktop or laptop. What it aims to be is something new – the way the iPhone was new, the way the iPod was new, the way the original Mac was new, and the way the Apple II was new. This is what Apple does very well – they take existing concepts and package it into something that just changes the game.
In the agency model, it is the publishers who are really the “seller” and sets the price, and the retailer is merely their “agent” who makes a contractually-fixed percentage of the sale. In other words, in the agency model it is not the store that determines the price but the publisher. All Apple wants is to ensure that the publishers don’t make sweetheart deals with anyone else, that the playing field is level, since Apple would be contractually bound in the agency model to sell books at the price determined by the publishers (at least as I understand it). It’s not Apple that’s setting the price, they just want to make sure that they get the same price as everyone else. The publishers are always free to lower their prices, as long as they do it across the board.
All music on the iTunes store is DRM-free.
JJ, Apple Music Store stopped selling DRM music a while back. The European laws seemed to be the cause for the change (plus contracts coming up for renewal). The last album I bought from there was DRM free…
Only christians buy PCs… ;-)
@ #46
There are so many posts here coming up so quickly that I haven’t had a chance to read them all yet. Apologies If I leave someone out (I’ll trawl through the others in a bit).
OK, I’ll fess up, I am a grumpy old man and have deliberately taken that role on this thread. It’s fun tweaking the noses of Apple users and watching the response…mainly because of the messianic nature of Apple and Jobs that gets people in (and which I don’t much like, I’ll admit). Appropriate tweaking I should think, on a blog that takes a dig at messiahs and group-think. ;-)
Apple versus PC rants etc, actually don’t interest me much, because, quite frankly with computers, it’s mostly a matter of horses for courses, followed by personal taste, interests and abilities.
If Apple products give people pleasure, well that’s great. Also, if they get the job done, perhaps better than other products, that’s great too (as in the early days of desk-top publishing; Apple and Adobe really ruled there for years…Windoze and PCs by comparison, although much cheaper, was not so hot).
I think Apple really has come up with some great ideas and making IT not only accessible but fun for people is to be applauded (even if they abandoned the desk-top gaming side of things).
I guess also, I’ve been watching Apple, as other computer enthusiasts have, ripping people off with their business model for years and that does annoy me somewhat. As does Microsoft with their business model.
So, don’t take it too seriously people, I’m just being a tease.
I bought the first iPod Touch. Even after having to “open” it to run free apps, it didn’t do it for me (no copy/paste? it didn’t occur to me to even look for that “feature” beforehand). Returned it promptly.
Apple is a very effective company. I don’t hate them, the iPod was revolutionary and at the time I bought my first (3rd gen already) there still was no real competition. The iPod has got me by the balls though, not because of itself, but because I couldn’t do without the accessories for it I have.
That said, much of what jafafahots #26 said is also true (not talking about the insults to apple fanboys). Whoever has installed iTunes in Windows and has had their startup folder/registry riddled with unnecessary Apple services, Quicktime hijacking browser settings (without any easy way to fix it), and plain out trojan-horsing Safari through Apple Update, knows it.
To those who brought up the Kindle,
Many people would still prefer an e-paper screen rather than an LCD or any other such tech. I still don’t think it will be a direct competition for ebooks.
I can’t say it’s doing a lot for me, but I’m really not much of a gadget guy; I’ve got an MP3 player (that I don’t leave the house without) and a mobile phone but have never owned a laptop or a notebook.
But the fact that the tiny new netbooks are so cheap – and that every now and then it’d be handy to have something on me to write and store things (my theatre reviews, for example)- that I may look into getting one of those.
The iPad, though, is more than I’d need – or would want to pay for.
@Nerd o’ Red Tulse
Thanks for the info. Like I mentioned I’ve been out of the iTunes/iPod land for quite sometime. I in no way mean to be getting into a flame war here. And Tulse, you are correct that the publishers set the price for ebooks under the new model – that to me seems to be the issue I have – I would rather the re-seller be the one pushing the price not the publisher. The thing is, there’s nothing stopping publishers from jacking up the price, you can’t look elsewhere for the same product at a more competitive price. It’s really a minor detail, but going back to my original point about “free market” (which was more or less a sarcastic remark) it to me, makes it less “free”. But – it is what it is, and the ebook market is just beginning to really take hold, so changes are inevitable.
@ Gobi – If Christians only buy PC’s, it looks like the Satanic Church is all about macs
http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/Apple.html :)
*Disclaimer – I use Windows, Linux and OS X on a daily basis. I find that one of the three tends to work best for a person based on what the user needs, and I often make recommendations based on that*
I have multiple Macs and yet I’ll take a contrary view. Apple is the equivalent of a cult for many. Their repeated denial of allowing me to make a choice and instead forcing it upon me on a machine I have to pay a premium for is starting to really rub me the wrong way and runs counter to everything that supposedly the internet was supposed to be about. It should be about my being able to make choices and not Jobs forcing them on me. He’s way to much like a Pope for my liking.
Hmm come on, to be fair, Apple has both ridiculously devote lovers, and hateful haters.
MS only has haters. (I like them, but not like like them.)
The iPad is here, print is saved!
I think the slate form factor has other uses beyond personal portability. It fits into locations where it can be in place when you get there. Instead of a waiting room with a bunch of out of date paper magazines, there can be a pile of slate readers. If the iPad gets that market first, they win big time.
The slate form factor can also be slipped into a pocket in the backs of airplane seats, into information kiosks, restaurant tabletops, and many other places. You don’t buy one, but a lot of businesses buy them so they will be in the places where you go.
#92 triscele,
I think it’s pretty obvious that the main reason Macs work so well (according to many of their fans) is that they run a pretty tight operation. If they opened for instance to run with pretty much any consumer hardware, like Windows does, no doubt there would be a lot of complaints about drivers and such. Much of Vista’s initial problems weren’t so much MS’s fault, but the hardware manufacturers’ failure to deliver good drivers.
I think it’s a matter of preference, you can’t really have it both ways. I prefer to use the hardware I like, but I also have to deal with a lot of driver issues with some.
Macs are awesome. Once you wipe off the shitty software and restore them to their pristine BSD states, they are quite useful.
@JJ: No, no don’t get me wrong… some of my best friends are PC users.
Oh, and Fords are better than Holdens and Nikon cameras are muuuch better than Canons and only looosers like vanilla ice-cream.
:-)
*yawn*
Apple fanboys.
*sigh*
Funny, I was just bitching about this today. Well, mostly how iTunes is a fucking resource hog and needlessly difficult just to, you know, play music through.
The only reason why I’m not drooling over the iPad is ‘cos I already have an iPod Touch (which I lovelovelovelove) and I can’t see the use of owning a bigger one.
You’ve pretty much summed up the thought process leading up to 90% of apple product purchases.
You would think that a bunch of people who pride themselves on rationality would know better than to use the old “fan boys” canard, but apparently not.
A company that sold 3 million laptops and 7 million phones just in the last quarter of 2009 is not making its sales off of “fan boys.” Hell, they’ve sold something like 40 million phones since 2007. Those aren’t fan boy sales. They’re, what, the 3rd biggest tech company in the United States?
Of course, it’s possible that I’m wrong. Apple is only selling to devoted, slavering irrational fans who will buy anything with an Apple logo on it. Okay. So what? See, because there’s no rule in economics that says those sales don’t count. Sorry. They go into the same column as every other sale.
The reality is that Apple has very effectively managed to capture the most important segment of the electronics market: people who buy computers and electronic devices with the same goals that they have in mind when buying a car, or as Greta Christina said dish soap. Or a mop, or a fridge. They want something that works, is pleasant and simple to use and relatively low maintenance. They don’t want to tinker or spend time with their machine just getting it to do what they want. They’ve got other things to do.
For some reason, most hard core techies and the companies they love regard these people with naked contempt. It’s mind-boggling, but they do. Techies seem to openly resent non-tech savvy people. So Apple serves this market and laughs all the way to the bank.
Macs and other Apple products have had and continue to have their issues, and there are plenty of things to criticize Apple for, but this one doesn’t make sense.
bart.mitchell:
I don’t see how the company stays afloat, what with the massive failures of the iPod and iPhone. Clearly Jobs has no clue what the public wants.
Andyo #89: I’m one of those who prefers the e-ink screen. I’ve been reading books on various Palm devices for years and rejoiced when e-ink came out. I find staring into what’s essentially a lightbulb for long periods of time tiring and tiresome.
I also like that the reading surface is not a touch screen for two reasons. First is that I don’t have to worry too much about how clean my hands are when I turn the page. As I own a bicycle store and spend a lot of time with greasy hands this is important. The other reason is that on every palm device I’ve had the first thing to fail is the touch screen. I don’t know about Apple’s multi-touch screen though, maybe they’re more robust.
Word.
Most of us have enthusiasms of some sort or another. If it’s not gadgets, it’s food, or music, or books, or boats, or…. Whenever someone posts something along the lines of “hey, did you see the new X? I think it’s really cool,” the reaction is usually friendly… unless X=something made by Apple, in which case the people who’re excited about it can count on being called dupes and cultists and fanboys. I honestly don’t get where all the hostility comes from: If you don’t like Apple stuff, nobody’s going to force you to buy it. It’s not like Apple has a Microsoft-like monopoly on anything; even its most successful products (e.g., iPod) leave far more viable market alternatives than Windows does.
Like whatever you like; it’s no bother to me. Just please don’t crappy in my punchbowl just for grins, ‘kay?
This is frightening, disgusting. PZ Meyers, where is your fucking outcry?!! Why haven’t you been ranting continuously about the Texas Board of Education. I see posts on the motherfucking iPad, but i wanna see this instead:
Not all of us! As an out techie I openly love teaching non-tech savvy people new things they can do with technology. In fact, it’s a large part of my job and it’s some of the most rewarding. It can be frustrating when you tell an end user to right-click and they say “what’s a right click” (insert any-key joke here). But patience is a virtue as they say. BUT – there’s a difference between enjoying a product and being a full-blown fanboi/ Believe me they exist as much as these “techies” you seem despise so much. There are many people who are into apple solely due to the image (READ:Hipsters).
“To start press any key. Where’s the “any” key? I see Esc, Catarl, and Pig Up. There doesn’t seem to be any “any” key. Wo! All this computer hacking is making me thirsty. I think I’ll order a Tab” -Homer Simpson
Yup. Just taking a look at the comments threads for ZDNet articles provides proof enough of that. Lots of little boys waving around their virtual expertise like virtual penises, claiming that they know all and everyone else knows nothing.
My favorite thing is when they rant about how Apple devices are insecure when there has yet to be a single in-the-wild virus attacking any of the tens of millions of extant non-jailbroken iPhones or touches (not to mention Macs). There are viruses out there that target jailbroken iPhones and touches, but with most if not all of those, the only reason the virus gets in is because the iPhone’s owner forgot to change the default password used during jailbreaking from “alpine” to something else.
I’ve used both Apple and PC products (by the way, iPod touches now do cut-copy-paste and have for some time), and I like bits of both. One of my dearest friends has a MacBook that has never had a crash, a virus or even a spamware attack — which is a good thing, as he had a severe stroke a few years back and sending e-mails is taxing enough on what grey matter he still has left, and I don’t think he could handle installing all that antivirus software.
Well to be fair, very rarely is a virus written for Mac/iPhone. There’s no need to. Also, I haven’t had a virus on my old WinMo or my new Android phone, so… But the chances of a full blown Mac virus in the near future is quite high – the increase of market share by apple is making writing a virus for it much more appeasing to those asses making them.
Note that most virus’s are written to hit corporate systems – either to steal information or to push huge quantities of spam through their servers. That doesn’t detract from the fact that Mac’s are more “secure” at the time, but it’s not concrete. Granted Mac’s would be a tougher to write a good virus/trojan/worm for, but it isn’t impossible by any stretch of the imagination.
Again, viruses and malware come with openness and popularity. The iPhone’s apps need to be approved by Apple. Pretty hard that malware would slip through non-jailbroken iPhones.
I say take your pick. Need a more foolproof and less error-prone device, you’ll have to choose the closed system. If you want a more open hardware system and one which most software developers code for, then it will have its own consequences too.
Apple is just another manipulative corporation that milks the mindless, technology addicted consumer for profits.
The Ipad is an over-priced and over-glossed waste of money sold with nefarious and concealed purpose of inspiring envy and separating economic classes.
I think you’re giving Apple too much evil genius credit.
Right. And Apple’s response to this problem is to ask “why make it necessary to right-click?” Just like auto manufacturers asked “Why make it necessary to shift gears yourself?” Which approach yields greater user autonomy and a larger market? The approach that abstracts away the elements of the interface that get in the way of doing what you want to do, whether that is driving or surfing the web.
You say this as though it were relevant. It’s not. IF “fan boys” exist, they represent a tiny fraction of the market that Apple is actually tapping. Usually, when a company rates as highly with its customers as Apple does, the company is judged to be doing something right. In the case of Apple’s, those customers are dismissed as idiots or fan boys. It’s stupid, but Apple doesn’t mind the lack of competition.
And this is just moronic. Aside from the lack of evidence for this statement (which is clearly born from your own personal prejudices about both Apple products and so-called “hipsters” rather than an assessment of the reasons that real people actually buy things), again, image-driven sales still count as sales. If Apple is indeed winning over millions of customers who buy their products for no other reason than to satisfy a shallow desire to look cool, then good for them. It’s not as though Microsoft or HP or Dell would just be sitting back and saying, “Oh, you can take that market, we don’t want them.”
Arguments about fan boys and image-obsessed hipsters come across as stupid and tone-deaf because everyone wants those sales. It astonishes me that Apple critics don’t get that.
No, possibly not enough.
Apple knows all too well the overall effect of their business practices. Soon they will corner the market with their promises of hip, new technologies that only the higher middle classes can afford, and the lower classes will be left struggling to compete for that same level of technological acknowledgment. Apple will have us by the figurative balls.
Several church leaders in Australia have given their annual easter messages: same old crap, Hitler and Stalin were atheists, atheism is a religion, etc, etc, etc.
It seems that a vocal minority are really, really annoyed that it was Apple who made this form-factor work and not some Windows PC company. Remember the early comments about the iPod being “lame”?
triscele #92:
Actually, Apple is doing a good job in keeping the Web open. By not supporting Flash, Apple is helping it to be deprecated and eventually killed.
theGobi #97, no, it goes like this: Ferrari > BMW > Maserati > Alfa > M-B > …. Ford/GM somewhere at the tail-end of the line.
What do you have against Flash?
I have to tell you, G_J, I’m missing the part where Apple is the bourgeois yoke descending upon the serfs and Flash and the humble Microsoft Corporation are the Working Man’s Heroes. Companies try to make money. Having a problem with capitalism and consumerism, I get. It’s the specificity of the beef with Apple that I don’t.
Anyway, relax. There will always be more affordable alternatives to Apple products. I’m defending them because the criticism Apple gets is just weird and illogical, not because they are The Greatest Company On Earth. I’ve been a PC user for a decade, though I’m now happily back in the Mac fold; I can’t afford to buy an iPad, and even though it looks fun, I’m not sure I could justify it even if I did have the money; I LIKE Windows 7, Og help me. I prefer OS X, sure, but that’s just me.
I don’t see how Apple, a large corporation, trying to make a lot of money is exactly a big deal. Last time I checked, that was every for-profit corporation EVER.
Wow. The vitriol in here is flying back and forth, eh. Personally, I like (not ‘like like’) my PC for what it does and what I use it for. It’s nice to have something that I have a lot of choice with in terms of O/S, software, what have you. I work from home, and my phone is for emergencies or quick communication back home when I am out so it’s just a phone; I have a camera that’s a nice easy peasy digital thing but it’s just a camera; I have a hand-me-down 1 Gig iPod nano that I do like (only wish it had more room) & it’s just an MP3 player; at some point I think I’d like to get an e-book reader but I’d go for something with e-Ink so that cuts out Kindle and Apple for that; and maybe, if the cash comes my way, I’ll be quite happy to spring for an iPad. I don’t know why people are so hateful about it. It’s nice-looking, has a bunch of nifty apps, it’s extremely portable and it’s not trying to be a laptop, phone, or MP3 player (granted, it is aiming to pull some of the Kindle marketshare, but unless (until?) it has an e-Ink simulator or something, it’s not really going to take over the e-book world though at least Amazon now has a big player [sorry, Sony] for competition). Why can’t people have both a robust computer for computing and an iPad for playing?
I still don’t get what this thing is FOR. It seems to be made for people who don’t want the utility of a computer but don’t want the mobility of an iPod. Unless it can out-Kindle a Kindle or out-handheld console a handheld console, there doesn’t seem to be any purpose to it.
A lot of people are wondering that.
Obviously part of the answer is to make money for Apple, which is fine as far as that goes.
The answer as far as the developers themselves though is kinda blurry to me. They must have put a lot of thought into it and the user experience, after all (and marketing too).
The screen is, to my mind, unsuitable for prolonged reading such as e-paper is for e-books, no?
I’m not sure about gaming, but I suspect that, bigger screen aside, it’s not in the same realm as a Sony or Nintendo hand held. Though I could well be very wrong there.
It just seems too big, droppable and awkward for iPod or iPhone type stuff.
And as many have noted, it’s just not powerful or fully featured enough to compete with other portable PC devices such as laptops or netbooks.
I like touch screen phones for instance (surprisingly so, I’ll admit) but for something more serious I like a real keyboard with tactile feedback.
Mmm, maybe the amazing array of Apple apps and the people who come up with them will create a niche, I really don’t know.
On a related note, I just wish I didn’t keep dropping my smart phone…they sure are slippery little suckers, especially in camera mode. :-(
Yeah, as far as I can see, the only reason to get one of these is in the hopes that someone will one day create some amazing apps for it. Which they certainly might, but that’s a bit like buying a bunch of baby walruses in the hopes that someone will one day discover a super-efficient fuel made from walrus blood.
The only positive thing Stephen Fry really said about it was that he was able to form an emotional relationship with the thing. Dude, get a pet rock. They’re much cheaper.
Several church leaders in Australia have given their annual easter messages: same old crap, Hitler and Stalin were atheists, atheism is a religion, etc, etc, etc.
Those rape-enabling jackasses can just shut the hell up.
The whole organization is a corrupt criminal enterprise. Last I checked, we don’t consult with drug lords and gang leaders for moral leadership.
I see no reason to treat a gang of child molesting sex tourists with more respect than other criminals.
@112
Funny, every car that I have bought is a manual. Last time I purchased a car and requested a manual the floor manager looked at me like I was insane. I prefer a manual because I feel that I have greater control of my car and its just more fun to drive even if its simply at the leisurely pace of city traffic.
I prefer OS’s that give a similar level of control as well with both hardware and software selections. I have never bought a canned can of computer parts with the exception of laptops. When buying systems for others I break this model, but for myself, I have always been very dissatisfied with Apple systems aside from the primitive introduction to computing they gave me thirty years ago.
For others, well that’s your market decision and I’m all for that, but I do feel that Apple gets way too much credit for slick marketing. Apple has always been a good platform for creative suites because they grabbed the non-technical, artistic user market more than a decade ago and they cater to it. For myself, if I can’t fix it myself or upgrade it then its simply a limited lifespan piece of tech that I really don’t need as I already have piles that I should throw out anyway. My retired PC’s make the transition to to linux server with no muss and no fuss so I feel that they are much better investments for me in the long run.
As far as extra buttons, I have seven on my mouse, but that’s so I can map as many macros to my mouse as possible especially for gaming. One button to me is so incomplete that I can’t even use OSX without total brain-lock and the touchpad interface of a macbook just frustrates me to no end.
So I’ll take my manual transmission and seven button mouse and you can have your automatic transmission and one button mouse and we will both be happy.
The iPad is not revolutionary. Tablets have been around for almost ten years. It is simply the Apple marketing and the existing base that will sell the units.
Never mind any other reason not to buy the iPad. Let’s just think of it as an eBook reader.
Sony Reader – weight just over half a pound – somewhat less than a normal hardback book.
iPad – weight one and a half pounds or so – somewhat MORE than a normal hardback book.
Sony Reader on the train – hold it up and read it with one hand, standing up, while holding on with the other hand, for an hour. (That’s from regular experience.)
iPad – err….aching wrist after two or three stops. (That’s based on trying to read a largish hardback in a similar situation.)
Sony Reader or Kindle – recharged once a fortnight. Turns 7000 pages without a recharge – that’s War and Peace four times.
iPad – recharged once a day, probably. Heaven knows how many recharges it would take to read War and Peace.
Sony Reader – size of a paperback, and lives in my coat pocket.
iPad – Too big for any coat pocket, therefore I have to take it out of my bag to use it, that I therefore have to take off my back…
Sony Reader reading experience – immersive – you forget you’re not reading a real book. You can read it literally anywhere you’d read an ordinary book.
iPad reading experience – well, it’s pretty, but I can’t imagine reading a book in bed, using this. Or sitting on a chair. Or curled up on a sofa. It’s too big and too heavy.
My case rests.
I see nobody complain the Amazon Kindle doesn’t have USB-support. Compare the iPad with the Kindle, including price, and you have to admit the iPad is a great proposition.
“Sony Reader reading experience – immersive – you forget you’re not reading a real book. You can read it literally anywhere you’d read an ordinary book….”
Actually, not quite literally – I wouldn’t read a Sony Reader in the bath. But then I wouldn’t try reading an iPad in the bath, either….
#125 – everything I said about the Sony Reader would, I have no doubt, apply to the Kindle.
I certainly do NOT have to admit the iPad is a great proposition.
(BTW – the Sony Reader does have USB support, but that’s just a detail.)
Am pleased to be closer to this
than to iPad and Pod and Kindle and the rest of the corporate revenue-generating crap!
This. I am a techie. Computer science degree and everything. I’ve never understood the fascination some people have with configuring every tiny detail of their computers.
Frankly, I’d rather pay the human-computer interaction specialists at a company like Apple to do all that for me so that I can get some work done. And that’s the advantage of a simple, locked-down system like the iPhone OS that runs the iPhone and the iPad. 90% of computer users need nothing more than a simple device that can browse the internet, view all their media, do email, and then maybe run some office productivity software and work with a few basic plug-and-play devices. That’s it. They sure as hell don’t need or want access to the innards of the computer.
Thus, the iPad. A device that anyone who wants total control will hate, but that the average computer user will love.
Here’s some bad news for those who were feeling too happy; a religious apologist article by a pretentious “atheist butt”:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/01/2863068.htm?site=thedrum
Ok, what’s it cost, and, more importantly,
who of you is wealthy enough to donate me one cus I can’t afford nuthin’. Pleeeese?
Will work for iPod.
I’m so sorry *sob*. I meant to say iPAd of course.
Ok, having read martin.benson’s review:
will for for Sony Reader too.
Grrrrr. I wish the ABC would at least have the guts to enable comments for such drivel.
Well, thanks for the link anyway, Uhlmann is in my book now.
Regarding the ABC – the Drum link, the article is written by Chris Uhlmann. This is what the ABC site has for his profile.
BTW – iPad – I’m getting one – can’t wait….
I think people are going to need to use one to get the point of the iPad. I won’t be one of them unfortunately.
All this ‘it’s not as good as an ereader’ stuff is just dumb. So what if it’s not? I reckon it’ll come close. Oh and you can surf the net on it too, and share photos. Did I mention watch movies? On an ereader you can only read a book. I’d happily pay a little more for something that can do a whole lot of other things incredibly well.
If I could afford it.
I might get a second/third gen iPad, not sure if I’ll get the first gen. I’ll go to a store, have a play and see what it’s like before I make a decision. Will I buy one because I like elegant gadgets? Yes. Do I feel bad about this? No. Sorry.
Now to the more important topic of disagreement:
{Loosens clothing, stretches, clears throat}
Anyone who disagrees with a word of the above is a capitalist running dog exploiter of the weak, and a communist beardy weirdy hippie liberal scum sucking shit eating donkey rapist. They deserve to be fisted by Russian Olympic shot putters with the shot put still in their fist. Anyone who disagrees with me about something as important and vital as my choice in technological gadgets is Hitler and Stalin’s bastard lovechild with Mussolini in a big threeway dictator jizz-a-thon and is trying to kill babies and probably likes Glenn Beck and the Pope too. Anyone who says anything that might even vaguely be taken as nbot entirely in line with my choice of technology, which is undeniably the only correct choice, is a kiddy fiddling puppy fucker and coprophageous fan of Rosie O’Donnell. Yeah I went there. You like Rosie. And possibly sympathise with Mel Gibson when he’s been drinking.
Fuck you.
Louis
Once my current 24 months locked-in contract runs out, it’s Iphone for me(not interested in this whole IPad business at all btw).
But a phone that calculates resuscitation drug doses and tube sizes in kids for me is just a must-have !!!
:P
As far as “techies hating Apple and Apple users” is concerned, no True
ScotsmanTechie would do that. Seriously, though, when I see someone working up a righteous anger about a hardware or software platform, with a notable lack of technical depth to explain the contempt, I suspect that what I’m dealing with is not so much a techie, more a religious adherent. Catholic vs Protestant, Sunni vs Shia, Mac vs PC. Shun the non-believer! Shuuuuuun-nuh!For counter-examples, look at three (overlapping) communities: the Hackintosh crowd (who coax Mac OS into running on non-Apple hardware), iPhone jailbreakers (who persuade iPhones to run non-Apple-approved applications), and those who develop open-source software for Mac OS. These are all people who like Apple products enough to expend their considerable technical expertise on them. They’ll have complaints about Apple, sure, obviously so in those first two examples, but their writing on the subject is more nuanced and interesting than the “$PLATFORM sucks LOL” juvenilia which tends to rear its head when anyone advocates a particular OS or piece of hardware online.
Stephen Fry is an iPimp.
It isn’t really by Stephen Fry. It uses the word “gotten”. Fry is British. QED.
The iPad looks interesting, but I don’t need one. It’s not powerful enough for my needs, and its dimensions are simply all wrong for my life.
I’d like to have an iPhone though. I could live with fewer audio tracks to carry one less device. What I can’t live with is AT&T.
Much though the iPad is (or will) garner good reviews for ease of use, I think the most compelling reason I can think for NOT buying one is the ethos behind the device. It is a closed system. You can’t write programs for it. You can’t install programs for it unless they’re downloaded by the Apple app store. You can’t tether the thing via bluetooth to a 3G provider of your own choosing. You can’t run any application which Apple themselves have not ordained, be they browsers with Flash support, book readers for unsupported file formats, or whatever. You can’t copy arbitrary files to it.
The thing is in the truest sense of the word a golden cage, very lovely and comfortable I’m sure but one which has some very unpleasant repercussions on what you may do with it. Once upon a time people owned their devices, now it’s almost the device that owns the person.
If someone really wants an iPad-like device they are bound to show up sooner or later and they’ll almost certainly be cheaper and more open too. Android OS (as but one example) demonstrates you can make a beautiful responsive OS without restricting what a user may do with it. In the meantime you can buy a netbook which costs half the price of an iPad and does twice as much.
So do Linux users get to look down from their secret ivory towers yet?
@Shala: us Linuxites, being smug Unix wizards, get to look down on everybody else all the time.
we don’t get ivory towers much these days, however. we usually build our own out of 19-inch racks and cable shelving.
A closed system… Anyone complain that their TV is a closed system? Their digital camera? Their car’s nav system?
Do you know why the iPad is closed? Because most software is a shit show of crappy UI and buggy programming.
Apple uses open standards wherever possible. However, they are vicious when it comes to their own standards of UI and stability.
They also like to make a profit, they’re not a charity.
To me “‘open” usually means free, cheap or traded.
Linux makes sense for academia but not for the average consumer or designer.
For all the iPod haytaz, this must surely be the media player of choice for dirty fuggin’ hippies:
http://www.ecomediaplayer.com/eco/home/home.asp
I’ve got one, and it’s such a cute li’l fella. OK, it has a horribly counter-intuitive interface and it can’t even do shuffle, but it’s wind-up! And it records your old vinyl! And it’s got a torch!
And no iTunes bullshit.
(Actually, looking at the site it looks like they might have jazzed it up a bit since I bought one, and given it a more iPod-style interface. Never buy first-gen…)
steveinthecity False analogies. Who would pay twice the market rate to buy a Ford that you could only refuel at a Ford filling station?
Say you go travelling abroad for 3 months. You find some nice local music. How do you load it on to your iPod? You carry your Macbook too? I go to an internet cafe, copy the CD, plug in my mp3, and transfer the music (and usually give the CD to the cafe owner in exchange for a few hours free internet use).
@146: I don’t have a problem with people liking apple, but it drives me nuts when people suggest that Linux is too difficult for the average user. Ubuntu is not perfect–but I’m pretty sure anyone with moderate computer experience could use it fairly easily. I’m not a techie, but I LOVE the idea of opensource and I’ve been using ubuntu for about two years. I’ve had problems with it, but it rarely takes me more than ten minutes online to fix things.
Okay, point is: yes, apples are easier to use, but Linux has become a viable alternative to the corprate operating system and it wouldn’t hurt for more people to it a try. and the more people using it, the better it will get.
Sorry, I’m too old and anal retentive to get the point of ‘shuffle’.
And I have an iPhone (only real smartphone my carrier in japan had), but I had to jailbreak it to get basic features like multitasking and rotation suppression. And to get an opensource flashcard program.
Those are the little things that really drive me away from the closed box system.
You can mod a car almost more easily than an iPhone!
(hyberbole is fun?)
Sili,
I’m not sure I understand what being old or anal retentive have to do with randomizing a playlist. If I don’t shuffle then it plays in alphabetical order, meaning I hear the original and then the two or three covers or live and/or acoustic versions I have. I don’t always feel like listening to the same song 3 or 4 times in a row.
KOPD
Aaargh! What? Is that because you have surrendered all responsibilty to iTunes?
I keep my music in folders. Top level is artist name, then subordinates for their albums. Then I just click on the album.
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to listen to random music (except in a self-created compilation folder of, eg, Tamla Motown singles). I don’t want to listen to a Zepplin track followed by a Rimsky-Korsakov symphony followed by god-knows-what. Shuffle is only good for people with whose music is all the same.
I want to be in control of what I hear, depending on my mood. I also usually want to hear the whole album, and I don’t want to waste half my life constructing playlists. iTunes is a control freak. I just want to do the equivalent of dropping a record on the turntable and playing the damn thing.
Pre-ordered mine on the first day I could. Super excited and I grew up as a Mac fanboy.
Two things.
One: I have had the “Don’t Panic” screen as my wallpaper on my iPhone for a year now, I couldn’t find the one I used in a decent link, so here are two choices.
A “used” version
A “nicer” version
Two: To the few people mocking Apple for not having games, Steam is coming to Mac. If you aren’t aware of the implications of that, Google it.
No this statement is moronic. Sorry I don’t have some research paper for you to look at, but I can go for a walk on the college campus up the street to prove my point. It’s not irrelevant in the slightest – Many people purchase Apple products for the image and not because they are “easier” to use. I know many of them. The ride fixies in a town full of hills, on a campus that’s built on a hill (that’s a stereotype, but it’s more common than you admit to). It’s image, not functionality. I have no prejudices against Apple or hipsters. But I can make fun of them.
And if you were look at my other previous posts you’d realize that I’m not hating on apple – I was merely stating that there are as many dumbass Apple fanboys as there are asshole techies. I use Mac’s everyday. Along with Windows and Linux (LAMP). I’d rather have my Marketing department on Mac’s, Sales and R&D on PC’s and my web servers on LAMP. But I’d never put my Web server on a Mac or try to put my Marketing on Linux or Windows.
I wasn’t making any statements about people purchasing Apple products due to fad as not being a “sale”. WTF is that supposed to even mean? When did sales come into the discussion?
Haha phro. Yes if I was traveling for 3 months I’d take a laptop.
I also suspect that apple will create an iTunes cloud so you can upload your own music to it so you don’t need your own mac or pc to add to your library and access it with whatever Apple mobile device you’re using.
Twice the market rate?? What are you talking about? A Macbook is $999. Are there a lot of $450 13 inch laptops with the same specs?
Talk about false metaphors.
I think opensource is a great idea in theory. But most people don’t need it or want it. Hardware innovation and new products aren’t derived from it.
If you’ve used an iPhone or an iPad what you’ll notice is what they’ve left out. Most people won’t even miss it. There is no desktop. No file management system.
http://www.thedoghousediaries.com/?p=1234
Pretty much dead on.
Oh and with Shuffle you get mixes of songs you would never expected or a song comes on at a perfect moment in your day.
Randomness is good sometimes.
@stevieinthecity,
Funny link.
#3 is that #6 isn’t true at all.
Well, I was referring specifically to my iPod (I use it at least as much or more than my PC). In iTunes I can of course sort by artist, album, song title, etc. On the iPod I can either select a specific artist, artist, or playlist, or I can select all songs alphabetically. Sometimes none of those choices are to my liking, so I shuffle for variety.
This is probably the main point where our tastes differ. My music isn’t all the same, but it could be categorized by genre or mood. Listening to a randomized playlist of a certain genre is not so jarring, and still means not listening to the same artist for 3 hours before getting to some of the other good stuff. But aside from that, I’m not so bothered by the discontinuity of genre switches between songs. In fact, I sometimes enjoy going straight from Mecano to As I Lay Dying.
If I want to listen to an album, it’s easy enough to select that album and play the whole thing. And I do that fairly often. But I also enjoy the pleasant surprise of a song I hadn’t heard in a while popping up when I don’t expect it. That can be distracting though, as I will often stop what I’m doing and just listen to it.
Fair enough. And putting it in that context, I think maybe I see why you related it to age. Since CD’s we’ve been able to shuffle, but back when it was records and tapes you listened to the album or you made a mixed tape and that was the order in which you heard them. For me personally, I was happy when CD’s came along with the ability to shuffle, and now with mp3’s I have a bigger list to shuffle. For me it’s a good thing. Thank you for clearing up for me what you meant. :-)
I’ll make a few comments here.
First, the iPad itself. It is by no means revolutionary; all it really does is put the functions of the iPod touch in an ebook form factor. It’s not world-shatteringly awesome; for some time I’ve been looking at it as the resurrection of the TRS-80 Model 100 more than anything else. The price compares favorably to the Kindle DX (swapping 3G for multimedia capability), and while I’d rather it was from the Mac side rather than the iPod side, it’s rather non-sucky.
Second, on Apple. I don’t claim to speak for anywhere close to all the people out there with Apple hardware. I am a big Mac fanboi, but I am ambivalent about Apple; while I think the iTunes store was exactly what was needed to settle the war over music downloading, I’m really not a fan of the closed-source model of the iPhone/iPad/touch architecture. It does have some fairly sound technical reasons behind it but Apple takes it to a rather paranoid level. I don’t want an iPhone, and when I do get either a touch or an iPad, it *will* be jailbroken.
The truth is, Apple is a double-edge sword of a company — they really do take extra effort with both the hardware and the software, and as someone who does paid professional creative work in iLife I appreciate that. But at the same time, my fandom really is about the Mac platform above all, and had I the programming expertise to do so I’d be trying to create my own Mac-like desktop environment for Linux and Darwin, because the closest Open Source equivalent, Gnome, is complete and utter garbage created by people who don’t understand what they’re trying to emulate. At the end of the day I can’t help but admire Steve Jobs for being the visionary that kept my platform alive; however, I do think the man is some kinda batshit and that control freakiness… well, frankly, it makes me wish the iPad was a Mac.
steveinthecity
Phro? What does that mean? Palestinian Human Rights Organistaion?
We obviously travel very, very differently. Do you have porters, only stay in 5 star hotels with safes, never go walking, or something?
Who wants to backpack around the world lugging a laptop, with all the associated worries about theft, weight, damage etc? Isn’t that precisely why tiny little pocket sized mp3 players were invented?
Even if they ever do, what good would that have done me over the last decade? And at least all my money goes to the locals, and none to Mr Jobs.
I can buy a perfecly adequate laptop in the UK for about £350. “Macbook, starting at £816”.
If I want randomness then I simply go to “Player Settings” and select “Random”. Or I listen to the radio. Which my mp4 player (half the price of an radioless iPod) has.
I don’t hate Apple. There just isn’t any point in me getting one that doesn’t do what I want at > 2x the price of something that does. If you’re happy to be the prisoner of Apple, fine
i’ll take your word for it. however, i cannot think of a single instance where this has happened to me and i have thought the product in question was better for it; quite the contrary.
Oh, really? And how will you prove that point? What data will you collect? What kind of questions are you going to ask the students? How will you obtain a representative sample? How will you determine the “real” reasons that they purchased the products they own?
Of course it’s irrelevant. Even if Apple products are purchased by the people you say, for the reasons you give, that doesn’t mean a damn thing about whether anyone else should buy them. As it happens, I don’t subscribe to your contemptuous cynicism; it’s narcissistic and childish, and as I said, it’s extremely unlikely to accurately describe the reasons that these people buy the things they do.
You clearly DO have prejudices. My Mac is cool, sure, but it’s also the most functional tool for my needs. A fixed gear is fashionable and not ideal for climbing hills, but it fulfills the function of a bicycle. Has it occurred to you that other people might have different priorities in making their decisions? Fixed gears appeal precisely because of the features they lack. That doesn’t work for me, most of the time, since I want to get up hills relatively easily. But a lot of other people prefer a bike that appears simpler to operate. That’s a higher priority for them.
Of COURSE marketing and fashion play major roles in convincing people of what they think their priorities are. That’s been true since the dawn of consumerism. But people aren’t idiots; if they buy something and discover that they should have had different priorities, that the experience isn’t what they were led to believe it would be, they typically won’t buy it again. That happens a lot with fixed gear bicycles. But people keep coming back to buy more Apple products. Apple is VERY good at making the experience of using their products match closely to what they tell you it’s going to be like.
Anyway, what’s the big deal? Don’t buy the thing. It looks like fun, but I won’t be buying one, either. It’s okay. No need to feel defensive about it.
I was responding to PHRO. That’s his posting name. I didn’t choose it. If were backpacking I wouldn’t worry about getting the local music on my mp3 player.
Yeah I’m a prisoner of Apple, like I’m a prisoner of the united states. If I was unhappy about it I’d move.
I wasn’t talking about “adequate” I was talking about comparable specs. Plenty of price comparisons have been done between macs and pcs. Once you add everything that most pcs don’t have included, a Mac is only marginally more expensive if not cheaper. Apple likes their hardware to be loaded with features and software. They don’t do stripped down. Except for the MacBook Air.
I was talking about shuffle because someone, was it you? was bitching about the Shuffle, like they didn’t get it.
Jobs gets stock. He get’s a $1 salary. None of the profits go to him.
Nomen. I have an iPhone I wouldn’t want to have to mange files on it. I was being specific about its abandoning of the desktop methaphor and it’s file system.
All I know is that Debian Lenny runs much better on my iBook than OS X ever did.
Anyone who thinks that the iPad is at all revolutionary should google “smartbook”, things like the iPad have been around since before the iPad was announced, not to mention released.
Jebus, I don’t care to collect data on something like that. That’s the joke I was making about a research paper. But it’s obvious that it’s what’s going on with many of these peeps. Apple’s a fad. These kids are more than capable of operating a PC, but choose to pay a premium for the look. Not that they should use a PC just because they can. But I know where there priories are (not their wallet!). If you can’t recognize that, then sir, you are dense.
Man, you just proved my point. The college here in my town (that i went to) is on a VERY LARGE HILL, so much so that it’s called “The City on The Hill”. There is no functionality in riding a fixie on campus. None.What.So.Ever. There is no priority for a “simpler bike” going on here. That makes no sense to me. There’s nothing simple about riding to the top of campus on one of those. People still do it. And they all carry their Mac books, wear skinny jeans, have dyed black hair and have plugs in their ears. No matter what you say – they are doing it for the image. I have no problem with that. I don’t “think any less” of people for that. Shit I choose things I buy for the image from time to time – but it doesn’t change the fact about whats going on.
Poor oppressed White Male Upper-Middle-Class Apple Fanatics. I feel bad for the lot of ya. And apparently I prejudiced to hipsters. I guess I can live with that. Maybe I’ll start a fight with one at the coffee shop across the street.
Abandoning the desktop metaphor is hardly new — the iPhone interface is not wildly different from the old PalmOS interface. I can do file management on my Palm if I need to (third party program called FileZ); it’ helpful for cleaning up things that won’t deinstall or getting rid of corrupted pdb files) but for the most part I can live without it, and the vast majority of times when I do use that particular program it’s mostly just to check the exact battery level or empty memory space.
But even more, the ultimate inspiration goes back to Windows 3 and its program manager — what was an awkward kludge on the desktop to avoid lawsuits turns out to be entirely workable on a small, shallow-learning-curve device. The Newton interface went even further, trying to reduce everything essentially to a scroll of virtual paper; although that proved rather limiting (the metaphor broke when it came to add-on programs), it was most certainly elegant. You have to keep in mind that it’s far more important for an interface to do what people expect it to do; either file handling or application mapping has to be absolutely seamless. It is *always* good to have the option to override the default interface, but no one should be *forced* to. Apple has always done this well.
Sorry, but, if you reread your post in which all other statements are in response to me, you will see how anyone would think that was a response to me too. Especially as it was on the same line.
Haha phro. Yes if I was traveling for 3 months I’d take a laptop. etc
@170
Hey man, don’t forget OS/2 It’s what inspired the 3.x series of Windows
That…wasn’t much of a review. It was a lot of “Apple is awesome. Isn’t Apple so awesome? I always knew Apple was awesome. I love the awesome people at Apple. What? iPad? Oh, yeah, it was really good. I got one. I’d tell you more but I’m out of space. Ta!”
I mean, I love Stephen Fry, I’m leaning toward getting an iPad, but praising this review just because it’s Fry is like…well, like praising the iPad just because it’s Apple.
To me, all the arguments against the iPad are starting to sound like this…
“Why would I want a Toyota Prius? For a lot less money, I can get an ’85 Ford F-150, and put a supercharger on it. It’ll go just as fast, lets me haul all the rocks and lumber I want all day long, and four-wheel drive lets me cross muddy fields, making it more versatile. Its four-speed manual transmission gives me so much more control over driving than that fascist “we-determine-your-ratio” CVT thing in the Toy-car. I can also outfit it with all kinds of accessories, like a gun-rack, leapard-print steering wheel cover, and loud pipes. You can’t even find a luggage rack for a Prius you don’t have to get from Toyota. And with my mechanical skills, I can work on fixing it once or twice a week; I can’t even find the engine on a Prius. Clearly, the 1985 F-150 is the superior automobile to a Toyota Prius.”
(Go ahead and get the out-of-control deathtrap jokes out of your system.) That’s the best analogy I can find for the PC vs. Apple debate: there are some people who need a lot more out of their computers. They need to be pushing the envelope in terms of performance, and feel they have to have complete control over all aspects of their computing. The cost for this is reduced reliability, and the requirement that you HAVE the necessary computing skills to deal with it.
But some people don’t need netbooks capable of rendering the next Pixar film. For them, ease of use and reliability are more important. They are willing to pay more for a stable system that’s not going to bombard them with error codes they don’t understand. And they are also willing to sacrifice open sourcing for Apple’s complete control over software because it improves that reliability.
The iPad is an end-user device. If you need to create PowerPoint presentations complete with self-shot video while on your commute to work, get a netbook. If you simply want a device that lets you read e-books, browse the web, watch a movie or play a game, then the iPad is more for you. One isn’t better than the other; they’re just geared toward different usages.
http://live.foxnews.com/strategy-room
http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/kids_are_all_right
OK.
I’ve finally got round to actually reading that article by Stephen Fry in Time.
PZ – you have seriously misrepresented it. It’s not a review of the iPad. It’s a four-page eulogy of Apple and their way of doing things (which, of course is SO much better than the competition), and a two-paragraph drool about the iPad which tells us NOTHING except that he likes it.
Given that Stephen Fry more-or-less admits from the start that as far as he’s concerned, Apple can do no wrong, and that the sun shines out of Jobs’ proverbial, it’s hardly a surprise. But it was still four pages of fluff.
Time magazine have just given Apple a four-page advert for free.
steveinthecity
I can’t understand that, but, hey, people are different. But, if you don’t want that extra functionality that only non-Apple products give you don’t then try and argue that Apple products are automatically better when it’s only Apple that can’t do what some people want. Some of us like to be able to listen to something without having to fly home to do so, or without having to guard 2.46 kilos of thief candy 24/7. Some of us travel to appreciate foreign cultures, to relax, and to travel light.
And exactly what are all these things that pcs don’t have included? The less-than-half-the-Apple-price pcs have everything that most people want, except maybe something like Norton Security/whatever (and they are often thrown in free). And, again, if they aren’t already included in a promotion deal, there are perfectly adequate free replacements for things like Word, Excel etc. Apple don’t do deals.
Also, once you take out the basic costs of the physical components, labour, shipping etc the remaining price difference is far more than 100%, more like about 500%. Maybe not in the USA, I don’t know what the prices are there, but that is certainly true for the UK.
Hell, for less than the UK price difference between a pc and a mac my daughter just had a 2 week holiday in Laos (including the return flight from London). I travel cheaper than than her and could probably have a 6 week holiday.
And there has never been an occasion where I wanted to do something on my laptop but couldn’t. Sure, I’d take a mac if you gave me one, but I wouldn’t take an iPod (except to sell it).
Wow. A religious war on Pharyngula. Who’d o’ thunk it?
Colbert used his to make salsa.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/02/colbert-uses-his-ipad-to_n_522906.html
I’d like to second this question. What exactly is a $400-$500 PC missing that would more than double the cost of the computer?
One button mice went away quite a long time ago. OSX works with just about any number of buttons on your mouse; my preference is three buts probably because I’ve been using three since 1983. Yes, the laptop single button part annoys me too. Which is why I don’t use one much.
Much longer. I worked on one of the first serious commercial attempts to build one in ’88-’91, the Active Book. Which as it happens was ARM based and might well have grown up to be very similar to an iPad by now. If ATT hadn’t bought the company and simply closed it down. Back then nobody outside PARC and a few universities etc had much of a clue about UIs and we were able to design our own metaphor without worrying about what people were used to.
The earliest tablet machine I’m aware of was poposed by Alan Kay in his PhD thesis in ’69.
5 years later I was working on another attempt (still ARM powered of course) that was faster and more colourful. 5 years after that, I was working on yet another one (still ARM powered and for that matter, all three were Smalltalk driven).
iPad is nice hardware that seems to do all the things that I wanted to be able to do with the stuff I was working on with the bonus that this time I don’t have to make the frakking hardware and OS for myself before I can just get on and do things with it. I’ve got a bit fed up with having to make my own pencils before I can write a story.
My point was if you compare a similarly equipped PC laptop to a MacBook… it’s not double the price.
I JUST compared a Dell Inspiron 15 to a MacBook. Same Core Duo processor and same memory and hard drive and then had to add a webcam, better Wifi card and a better graphics card get it closer to the MacBooks specs.
The MacBooks screen is smaller but it’s a higher resolution. It also has a better graphics and video card.
Guess what the price difference was… $106.
$1043 for the Dell. ($838 before upgrades)
$1149 for the Macbook (I had to bump up the ram and the HD to get it inline with the Dells base specs which added another $150 to the base $999)
Just sayin.
@TheBlackCat
FIFY
And I never argued that Apple products are automatically better.
It just seems that you’re being really nitpicky.
“OMG I can’t listen to the latest Laotian folk song on my mp3 player because my iPod won’t sync with the PC at the internet cafe! Damn I wish I had a roxio.”
Yeah, I don’t see that happening.
I dunno, I had to buy diamond studs for my case and platinum bus cables. And that’s ESSENTIAL!
All kidding aside, the only thing I can think of that is “missing” with most PC’s is office, but a)that isn’t going to double the cost b)there are alternatives like OpenOffice, and c)Office 2010 will have it’s core programs available free in the cloud.
My latest build last summer, the ONLY software I bought for it was Windows 7, and that cost me a WHOPPING $29. I spent $800+ on hardware (it’s a beast, and I bought top-of-the line hardware of the time). So I guess 29=800, right?
@174
My system is very stable. I simply did the research and found great parts to pull together a system that I am very satisfied with. The only part that gave me a significant problem was the still prototypical Physx card that I picked up. Now that NVidia has incorporated the Ageia library in their drivers I don’t even need the separate physics processor.
@181
Yes, I am aware that tablets have been around for quite some time, but I hedged my estimates to the general consumer release of the tech in the last decade. Your research sounds very interesting. But for the most part, I do like making my own pencils at least in the context of your metaphor.
This is fun. Who’s next?
Damn it. Missed a tag.
@KOPD
I just thought with all the preadolescent comments that they weren’t old enough to know there were mp3 layers before iPods.
Can we have Pharyngula back, please?
Hey. Step away from the Apple thread. We’re still getting the fanboi verses not fanboi battle out of our system.
@174
Also, from some perspectives a manual transmission is more reliable than an automatic transmission… If the battery is dead, I can always push start the car. Also, I live in an area with one of the highest auto-theft rates in the country, but the manual is less likely to be stolen simply because less people know how to drive them and they have lower resale value.
As I said earlier, you are welcome to your market decision, so don’t get bent out of shape when I make mine.
“That makes no sense to me.” Are you reading your own words? Can you not fathom that it might make sense to someone who is not you? Again, people who are not you have different priorities! A fixed gear bike is functional if it moves forward when you push the pedals. Are you saying that these bicycles do not?
Demonstrate this with data or SHUT UP. Again, this is simple narcissism: “if people are doing things/making purchases that I would not, they are clearly making their decisions for reasons that I can be dismissive of.” You’re having trouble with the idea that people might rationally come to different decisions than you.
You clearly do. “Buying X only for the image,” is not a judgment-free statement. Real phenomenon, sure, but it’s being used to discount the decisions of people whose actual thoughts and opinions you are not privy to.
Who said anything about oppression? “Prejudice” is not always a dirty word, you know. In this case, it’s pretty much the definition for your attitude. It’s not harmful prejudice, merely annoying.
Blasphemy! :) My first MP3 player was the NOMAD by Creative Labs, and that was the pre-iPod days. If I’m not mistaken the first commercial MP3 player (I think it played MP3’s and not some other format)was released around ’97 and if I remember correctly actually drew quote the buzz.
Maybe they like fixies because it’s fun. Maybe they don’t mind if they have to pound up the hill on their bike. Maybe they are being a bit pretentious. So what.
Well you don’t live in here, aren’t on my campus, so you have NO CLUE why a fixie is an obvious image purchase.
Case in point: I have a road bike. I ride it to work daily. The coffee shop across the street from my work there’s a student who works there, who is your stereotypical hipster. He rides a fixie. I’ve shot the shit with him many times about riding around town (as riding is the norm here, but can be quite dangerous). He’s told me what a bitch it is to ride around town. But he thinks it’s a sweet looking bike (and it is, it’s bright Orange and Black, with Orange tires) so that’s why he owns it.
I know were on SciBLogs, but come on not everything needs “data”. By your own admission it’d be nearly impossible to really gather the data on why someone made the purchase (very few people would admit to buying something based on fanboyism, although I know a few people who are openly MacFanatics)
And you obviously haven’t read my comments as I explicitly said I use a Mac. Daily. I understand why someone would make the purchase. I recommend Mac’s to my coworkers who I think would benefit from using them. My whole point was that there are some people who go to apple for the image. I never said everyone nor did I imply that.
Man maybe it’s just the internet, but i don’t know how you draw that conclusion. Shit, I buy t-shirts with logo’s for the image. I could go out and buy a bunch of Hanes t’s for 1/5 the price, but I don’t (ok I do for under shirts).
But alas, this is getting tiresome (finally) and it’s been fun. I’m going to stick with my original point that fanboism exists (and it does for MS, Linux as well).
@stevieinthecity#9dac9
It’s a stupid argument to begin with, and we drew that example out way too far. The only point to that example is that people will buy things not because of function but because of image/look. And I never meant to imply that this is necessarily bad.
RingTailedLemurian: “if they aren’t already included in a promotion deal, there are perfectly adequate free replacements for things like Word, Excel etc. Apple don’t do deals.”
That’s not true – there’s plenty of free software for Apple. I use NeoOffice on my macbook lappie. It’s BSD under the hood, and 90% of open source software for linux can be made on apple just by switching one OS line in the makefile. Yes, you do have to install the developer tools to get the X environment, but there’s no extra charge. I have C, python, php, perl etc. There’s a lot of scientific stuff out there that I used to use before I changed jobs.
I’m a little curious. I know that a lot of us belong to one religion or the other, and some of us on each side have made disparaging remarks about the foolishness of the other side but I saw an awful lot of commenters I’ve never seen before on this thread. It may be conformation bias once I noticed, but it seemed to me like the one’s I noticed were all not only dismissive of iPads but acted like people who don’t particularly want to get into the guts of their machines don’t deserve to even have a computer. There was a feeling of “I know so much more about computers than you ever will and I think people who buy Apple products are childish and stupid.” The tech version of name dropping was hilarious.
As for me, looks like a nice toy and I will probably get one eventually. I find trying to read on my iPhone rather difficult. If any of you are thinking “just a giant iPhone” you are right, but I still think it will have it’s uses.
The vehemence of some of the Apple-hating that is going on here is just a little weird to me. Prefer PCs and Blackberries then for the love of dog buy those. Prefer Apple produces, buy those. Oh, and you oh, so superior computer guys out there: Yeah, you know more than I can even imagine about computers. But you see, I can just get my work done. And my play. I am perfectly happy with that.
JJ
Mine too. And it used rechargeable AA batteries (got 2 extra sets free with it after 2 minutes haggling), so I could use it to recharge all the batteries for my camera, torch, travel speakers etc too, without having to take a charger with me. Still got it. Still works.
steveinthecity
#182
Pricing is obviously very different USA v UK then. Base level Inspiron 15 £349, macbook £812 here. Virtually the only difference is the Dell has a built in webcam. Don’t really want a webcam anyway. And if I did I’d rather not have one built in. I’d have to keep waving the damn machine around to show someone the garden, or the weather. Nobody wants to see my face from 18″ away :)
#184 – That’s the whole point. Choice. Control. I can listen to what I want, when I want, whereever I am. An iPod is useless to me because it won’t let me do that. Apple want to chain me to iTunes and to force me to pay them for any music I want, a lot of which they don’t have anyway. And seeing as you’re sneering at my taste in music, I’ll respond in kind – iPods are ok if you’re the sort of person who is gagging to pay extra for less, never goes anywhere interesting, and never wants to hear anything different. Which it sounds like you are. And proud of it.
Anyways – enough of this bollocks, let’s hand the thread back to iPads, about which I have nothing to say, except that they’re not for me either :)
I meant “Virtually the only difference is the mac has a built in webcam.
Otrame, I don’t know jack about biology but that’s why I read this site. I generally try not to talk about things that I don’t know. You know the whole “better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to speak and prove it.” I haven’t commented on Pharyngula in maybe a year and particularly since PZ put in the whole registration part. This is a topic within my area of study, so I feel more comfortable participating in the discussion so I delurk for this thread.
You may have not been talking about me but with the general nature of your statements, it is very hard for me to determine that. Note that I have simply stated facts about myself and not generalizations about apple products or about apple users. It would greatly help if you pointed out who you were referring to rather than make amorphous statements the infidel opposition.
The condescension apparently cuts both ways.
That’s half right. While you do have to use iTunes to transfer music to a non-jailbroke iPod, you do not have to buy the mp3s from iTunes. It doesn’t matter where you get them. I have over 2000 mp3s on my iPod and not a one was bought through iTunes. Most are CD rips, a few were purchased on Lala, some from Amazon.
Here’s a little glossary of terms for those that may not understand the tech speak.
LAMP Server: Linux, Apache, MySQL P-scripts (PERL, PHP, etc.) ie the backbone servers of teh internets.
Linux : OS based on UNIX created by Linus Torvalds. Literally the L in linux.
Apache : HTTP web server. The set of programs serving much of the internet web content.
MySQL : The database backend supporting much of the web content served by Apache servers. Recently purchased by Sun Microsystems.
PHP and PERL : Scripting languages that allow dynamic content creation for web pages.
Ageia : Company founded to promote the integration of a dedicated physics coprocessor onto future systems.
Physx : Ageia’s software library developed in parallel with the coprocessor hardware. Purchased by NVidia.
NVidia : Leading market share manufacturer of graphics cards. Bought out every major competitor with the exception of ATI. Bought Ageia for their library and integrated it into their own software so that there is no additional need to add hardware beyond SLI.
SLI (Scalable Link Interface) : proprietary NVidia system for parallel processing of 3D graphics widely supported by hardware manufacturers.
Just to add to James’ explanatory notes above
Sun Microsystems itself has been swallowed up by database giant Oracle, so MySQL is now actually owned by Oracle… How long will it be anything other than Oracle Lite I wonder.
I have to say this thread is fascinating in a weird sort of way – just because there is no book of magic fairy tales to argue over, the rational types have to find something schism over.
I haven’t seen an Apple product I would pay out for, but I have to admire their marketing savvy. The only thing I would buy (had I the spare cash) would be their shares! I am sure Mr Jobs’ device will sell remarkably well, and lots of people will find many uses to justify it. As long as Apple doesn’t threaten to stifle real innovation with its technological monoculture, or with litigious protectionism (like this?)
JJ, I think I am misunderstanding what you mean by “image.” You seem to use it simultaneously to mean both simple aesthetics of an object and fitting a social image. These are distinctly different things, and one is implied to be neutral; the other is implied to be bad,
Damn, this is a crazy thread and I’m coming to it very late.
For someone like me, price is the real problem with Apple products. I use my computer for word-processing, a few stats programs, web-surfing, loading mp3s to my iPod, and playing spider solitaire. That’s it. PCs do this for a much lower price than Macs. The laptop I’m typing this on was $500. Hell, I use my 1st generation iPod Touch (it was a gift) to listen to mp3s and surf n the web occasionally. I don’t even have the software update that would allow me to download apps, but I do love my iPod touch
That being said, the iPad looks really cool. I don’t have the cash for it, but I can see why someone who does have the money would buy it.
Now you’ve really confused me. Nearly all of the music on my iPod was ripped from CDs. I have never purchased a single song from the iTunes store.
Base level Inspiron 15 £349, macbook £812 here.
It might have something to do with how they’re made, don’t you think?
The Dell has an inferior processor, and uses antiquated DDR2 :::snicker:::.
And then there’s :::SNORT!::: the Intel X4500HD as a graphics accelerator. :::BWAHAHAHAHAHA *blink* Seriously? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!:::
Hint: When you use cheap components, you get cheap computers.
Anyone know if Dell is still using prison labor, too?
I’ve already made my comments on the iPAd elsewhere, but as one of those evil “techies”, I will add a comment on the current discussion.
What I tend to find irritating is a ‘fanboi’ attitude (toward Apple products, or toward Linux, or anything else, for that matter). Yes, Apple tends to make very good products, that are very well designed, and also “cool”. But they are not unique, or groundbreaking, or any similar thing. And what techies can find irritating is Apple’s taking some idea that is not new, wrapping their marketing around it, and then have a load of fanbois squealing and gushing about how amazing the new apple whatzit is.
At last some fanbois (like Stephen Fry, for example) admit that their position is not a rational one: it isn’t a question whether the new Apple whatzit is better, they want it just because it is cool. This is at least tolerable: someone who recognizes that the matter is something like religion and doesn’t pretend to anything more.
For me (at least, but I suspect for many others), it very much is not a matter of objecting to someone else’s choice. If you say, “I think iPads are really cool and I’m going to buy one”, then no one will have much to say; it’s your money and your choice, after all. But when someone starts heading in the direction of “Yes! It does less and costs more, and that’s what makes it better!” then some of us ‘techies’ may have some strong objections.
Like religion, your believing in your god is your business, and there is not much I will say about i
t. But if you come out in public saying that believing in your god is the right and reasonable thing to do, then you’d better have good reasons, and I will object if you don’t. Perhaps less pointedly, your choice of chocolate ice cream is not something I will dispute, despite my preference for cardamom or green tea. But if you insist that your chocolate is objectively superior, then I will demand some good reasons, and object if you have none.
So, if you wish to have an Apple whatzit, then by all means get one. There is nothing much wrong with them (apart from a price premium), and the Apple version is usually a very good implementation of the current whatzit. But don’t try to tell me that it is something “special” in any way other than fashion or marketing.
#206:
I’ve seen the HTC, and I’m not surprised at all that Apple is suing them for their blatant rip off of the iPhone, down to menu colors.
Patent holders tend to get upset when you steal their patented ideas to make a buck for yourself.
Shala @ 144,
Down onto this thread and the poor hapless apple fanboys in it?
You betcha !
It’s not only just the Mac OS software, but also the fact that you can build a computer from components for 1/2 of the price.
You pay for the Apple label like you pay for “Louis Vuitton” or whatever.
Nothing on the internet is as deeply
satisfyingtimewasting as discussing operating systems…:-)Aquaria,
Of course, if proven true, ripping off patented ideas is quite wrong (HTC are arguing that their machine was released 9 months before the i-phone, so claims of a rip off are a little less than cut-and-dried). And of course Nokia would suggest out that Apple are hardly innocents in regards of patent infringement.
Not that Apple is necessarily at fault here, just that things are not necessarily as black and white as Apple’s legal PR would make out.
#210:
I think what’s special about it to me it’s that the Apple is a better buy for me, longterm, and re: reliability. I simply don’t have the headaches of owning one that I had with PCs.
Anyone who could say that I have a Mac because I have some pitiful need to be hip would be just as wrong as the theists who say I’m an atheist because I want to do immoral things.
Their computers work for me. It’s all I care about.
Usagichan @213: It’s worth pointing out that the iPod is also a complete ripoff of someone else’s design, down to the circular touch wheel (I believe the patent application was sent in but never finalized, which is how they did it legally). Likewise, the original Mac was largely copied from Xerox’s business computer. Apple is actually much better at recognizing the untapped potential of other people’s designs than coming up with them themselves.
The name iPad is itself a trademark infringement.
Midnight Rambler @ 215
I used the Xerox Documenter (actually a horrible machine, bulky slow and very clunky); the innovative aspect was the GUI (WIMPy controls, early WYSIWYG), which is what the Mac OS copied (as did Microsoft a little later).
I have no problem with Apple’s slick marketing and HCI design/ engineering nous. I dislike their closed system approach, but as I don’t use their products its largely an academic dislike. The thing would annoy me is if they start using MS-like litigation to stifle the market with FUD. I have an open mind over the HTC case (the details, as with most IP cases are complex beyond my interest), but if the litigation starts mounting up it will inevitably stifle technical development as resources get swallowed up by legal requirements.
In re #214… If Apple computers work for you, then you’ve made a good choice (for you). And that’s great; I know a bunch of people who use Macs (and other Apple products) happily, and there’s nothing at all wrong with being a satisfied Apple customer. And as long as you don’t start trumpeting fanboi nonsense, us techies (this techie, at least, and I suspect most others) will be happy to leave you to your choice.
The only reason the iPad would appeal to me is if it does indeed turn out to be a universal ebook reader, with aps for each of the separate DRMs. Remembering which ap would read which book would be a pain, though.
gbyshenk (@210):
I don’t mean to be picking on you; your comments are representative of a stream of thought that runs through this thread, and which I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last two days.
Except for their history of, you know, breaking ground. There’s more to being groundbreaking than simply being the first to think of a particular solution. But more on that in a bit….
FTFY. Oh, I don’t mean to say there isn’t plenty of marketing (any company that makes a product and doesn’t market aggressively is just a chump), but much of what techies write off as hype is really more a matter of a fundamentally different approach to designing their products: They don’t design tech products, they design consumer products. This where Apple has been groundbreaking: Their ideas may not be new, but their products are, in ways that sometimes seem a bit lost on the geekier¹ among us. Apple didn’t make the first personal computer, nor the first GUI OS, nor the first digital music player, nor the first smartphone… but they did make the first product in each of those categories that was broadly accepted outside the boundaries of geekdom. So far, the people I’ve heard say the iPad will be groundbreaking are predicting the same in this case, not ignorantly pretending Apple has “invented” the tablet computer.
You’re defending people who make it a habit to be irritated over others’ pleasure at something new and (in their opinion) cool? Remind me not to invite people like that to my house for Christmas morning.
I think too often those of us who like to think of ourselves as skeptics and rationalists fall into the trap of conflating emotional with irrational. So what if our response to a new product is at least partly emotional? That’s a common part of any consumer’s response to any consumer product: Not just “does it work?” (though obviously that’s critically important), but also “does it look good?” and “does it feel good in my hand?” and “is it fun?” And as long as a product actually functions and accomplishes the tasks you need, it’s perfectly rational to base preference on these other emotional factors.
Except that the dynamic of this thread (and of most platform wars type threads I’ve witnessed) is, in fact, “a matter of objecting to someone else’s choice.” Go back to the beginning: PZ’s OP essentially says, “this looks really cool; I want one,” and then links to the Stephen Fry article, which basically says “this is cool, I’m getting one”… after which several of us chimed in and said “wow, this looks cool, I wish I could have one.” I may have missed it, but I don’t recall anyone saying “you people who hate Apple ought to be forced to get one, too.”
And then the predictable wave of anti-fanboy fanboys showed up and started telling us we were stupid, ignorant, unsavvy dupes for liking what we like. SRSLY?
Frankly, I’m really having a hard time understanding how the non-fans are the aggrieved party in all of this.
¹ Please note that at no point do I ever intend any form of the word geek as an insult.
All:
I’ve been thinking about the roots of this perennial haters-versus-fanboys dynamic that inevitably shows up in any discussion of an Apple product. I started to incorporate this into my response @220, but I didn’t want it to get lost in the defensive character of that reply.
I think what’s really going on is that the product-maturity life cycle of these computer-related high-tech products has been so short. Lots of products (cars, airplanes, home sound systems) start out as relatively immature technologies that require a high level of user expertise, and constant tinkering, simply to function at all. As they mature, they gradually become products that pretty much anyone can use, and ultimately that everyone can use pretty much effortlessly.
With computers (and related products), this maturation has happened essentially within a single generation, such that the early tinkering experts overlap in time with the effortless consumer/users. It has been Apple’s avowed mission since its inception to drive computer products toward the latter group, and I think that’s the actual burr under the collective saddle of the former group.
I have a nephew who lived in my house briefly while he was a teenager, and he actually believed that GUIs and such were an abomination specifically because they made using computers “too easy.” His (admittedly cranky teenaged) notion was that anyone who didn’t really understand what was going on at the machine level didn’t deserve to have a computer at all; this was almost a moral absolute in his mind. And yet this same kid would happily microwave a frozen burrito without the slightest clue how the magnetron work, or anything else about the tool he was so effortlessly using.
This same dichotomy explains, I think, all the hu-hu about the closedness of Apple stuff: Does anybody complain that they can’t remap the keypad on their microwave oven? That they can’t get their wall clock to run anticlockwise? That they can’t change their car to run on diesel or kerosene or whale oil on a whim? No, because everybody accepts those products as designed items that operate in the specific way they were designed to operate.
It might help if you stop thinking of Apple’s products as computers and phones and media players, and instead think of them as information/media appliances; I’m pretty sure that’s how Apple thinks of them.
I’m going to second what Bill says. Ever since I first became a Mac user (1993), I’ve been privy to the searing hatred many techies have for the Mac platform. MacOS X managed to bring quite a few of them around, but the insanity continues. (Though the hatred of some techies is nothing compared to the sheer idiocy of Windows fanbois. When the only really interesting thing about your chosen design is a) a once-interesting VMS-derived kernel that’s had more holes blown in it than the Berlin Wall and b) a lot of games, you really have nothing to stand on.)
It does rather irk me that the Mac seems to be about image above all other things; there is no other justification for the horiffic, painfully neutered MacBook Air or any number of other misbegotten ideas (like, say, the 20th Anniversary Mac, which was long before Steve’s return). But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some of us that can describe definite advantages to the Mac platform — a fine-grained, powerful scripting architecture, a user interface built on nearly thirty years of standardization and active use, and a strong focus on a core market (media production). Add to that the Unix/Mach underpinnings of OS X, some of us consider that worth paying the premium for, even despite the schizoid attitude towards open computing. (And I’m a Linux fanboi too — the cognitive dissonance might kill an OSS purist.)
Another piece of overrated schlock by the master of marketing, Steve JObs.
NOte to BrianX @ 222 and others: As a newspaper editor, I work regularly with Macs. They have their advantages, but they’re not ideal, and Steve Jobs does continue to sell mythology for which you overpay.
In re #220:
It seems to me that this is part of the problem.
What the argument here seems to amount to (to put a slightly different spin on it), is “Yes, Apple is not the first, and not the best, but they have the most effective marketing.” This may well be true — even going back to the original ‘1984’ commercial for the original Mac — but this is not something that I think merits great praise (at least outside the marketing world). Consider that one might make the same argument about Scientology.
Not quite. I have no problem with anyone being pleased. What I find irritating are those who feel the world needs to share their pleasure.
Ok, lets go back to the beginning. PZ’s message was a link to the Stephen Fry article, which was mostly just his emotional reaction (which was ok, if a bit long), but also included a chance for Apple to put in their plug for, “Yes, it is less capable, and that’s what makes it so great!” nonsense. And the second response was, “why would I want a[n iPad]?” I’ll grant that the question was a bid pointed, but what makes it interesting are the responses to the question, which run along the lines of:
As I see it, this kind of response displays some paradigmatic aspects of the fanboi: 1) an inability to recognize that the fan item is less than perfect, and 2) an unwillingness to say “it’s just cool and I like it.”
In this latter aspect, the attitude seems to me to be simlilar to that of some religious types: they believe, for emotional or other non-rational “reasons”, but cannot admit that their reasons are subjective. Rather, they must go on at length presenting bad reasoning for why their beliefs are justified.
So with fanbois. A non-fanboi, when asked, “why would I want X”, will say something like: “I don’t know. I think it’s cool and does what I want it to do; if you don’t think so, then you probably won’t want one.” While a fanboi response will be something like, “it’s an amazing, groundbreaking new thing!” What this illustrates is a contrast between the objective and the subjective (or the lack thereof on the part of the fanboi). The non-fanboi can recognize his (or her) subjective feeling for the fan item for what it is in its subjectivity, while the fanboi treats his (or her) subjective feelings as something objective.
Regarding “this perennial haters-versus-fanboys dynamic that inevitably shows up in any discussion of an Apple product” #221, it seems to me that Bill mixes together several very different things. Perhaps there is an element of adolescence involved (both in terms of the technology and the attitude), but I suspect that it is hardly the most important factor.
Also important, is the ‘techie’ vs non-techie attitude toward technology, which at least includes an interest in how things work. A techie, whether or not s/he happens to know how some particular thing works, will almost always be interested in finding out. Techies are the sort of people who take things apart to figure out how they work, and it doesn’t necessarily matter whether those ‘things’ are computers (or computer programs), radios, motors, or something else. And as the previous suggests, not all techies are computer geeks; some may end up working (or playing) with cars, or rockets, or metalworking tools. And in general, techies don’t like being unable to tinker with stuff, which influences their attitude toward “the closedness of Apple stuff”.
There are also those who have a political stance toward the question, as exemplified by the FSF. These folks are probably ‘techies’ (in the sense just described), but their attitude is different, in that they see the spread of computer technology as enabling human freedom, an the openness of technology as an important aspect of that human freedom. For that reason, these people will be the strongest objectors to the closedness of Apple stuff. And perhaps more specifically “Apple stuff”, because Apple has (and tries to create/preserve) an image of freedom, while at the same time being an agent of control.
I submit that the collapsing of these different positions into “cranky teenaged [] notion”s is overly simplistic, regardless of what one might think of their merits.
@225:
See, I distinguish between political, technical, and “Mac sucks” arguments. The technical arguments are all relative, and IMHO don’t really apply anymore unless you’re still fighting the microkernel vs. monolithic battles of the 1990s — of the three major OS kernels, two are fundamentally microkernels with massive design compromises (xnu, NTOSKRNL), and the third (vmlinux) is fundamentally monolithic with massive modularity, and although microkernels will always have a slight performance penalty, really it’s all a wash when everything’s well over 1.5GHz with vector processing built in. (That said, I still give Mac OS X an advantage for the scripting architecture and the interface design.)
“Mac sucks” arguments are usually flat out nonsense; I find the complaints about one-button mice particularly looney, since the Mac interface was originally designed around a one-button mouse; it’s sort of like complaining that it’s hard to pronounce French using Spanish phonetics. (Given that the MacOS has had a multi-button interface since OS 8 and supported multibutton mice out of the box since Rhapsody, those arguments haven’t applied in a long time anyway.) The truth is that I think the vast majority of anti-Mac arguments have revolved around three problems: foreign interface (again, an issue of vocabulary code-switch more than anything else), cooperative multitasking (somewhat of a necessity in the System 7 era to keep older software running transparently), and Apple as image-over-substance vendor (which is not actually true, but sure is hard to see given the hype surrounding the brand). Those are the arguments that offend me most, because they’re invariably made from a position of ignorance and/or grudging use.
The last point, the political one, is more complicated than either of the above. I think the political arguments actually do have a well-thought-out basis; although many of Apple’s early proprietary choices like ADB, DIN-8 serial, DB-25 SCSI, and NuBus had some very specific reasons behind the design choices (particularly making sure all the connectors on the motherboard side were female-only so there wouldn’t be motherboard replacements because of something silly like a broken pin), they could be horribly inconvenient and required adapters for standard equipment, some of which could be quite expensive. Having said that, though, I always found the political arguments on the software side logical but a bit wrongheaded, since (especially in the case of the FSF’s Apple boycott) it impeded on Mac users’ ability to find help to do whatever they wanted with their systems. (And I have to admit that my first experiences with the full iLife package, as opposed to just iMovie and iTunes, were a bit off-putting with the tight integration not only between programs, but with Apple’s content machine, were a bit off-putting; this is something that a Linux distribution maintainer likely could *never* do.)
Personally, I have no problem with the App Store per se. But I don’t like some of Apple’s editorial decisions — locking out interpreters (so I can’t run Flash or a BASIC or Java interpreter) or private APIs prevents me from doing things I can do trivially on my PalmPilot, and removing adult content apps from the App Store just seems flat out suicidal. Those I think are all legitimate arguments against the iPhone, but for the iPad and iPod Touch — get over it. Wait for the jailbreak.
Yeah, because we all know that Apple uses only the best components in their machines. And, I don’t know much about prison labor, but what do you think of Apple using child labor to build computers?
When I complain about the closedness of Apple’s systems, I am not complaining that I am unable to make them do something for which they were not designed. The ‘closedness’ that I have a problem with is Apple telling me what I can or cannot do with the computer that I own. A more appropriate example would be me buying a toaster and then finding out that I’m only allowed to make 2 pieces of toast at a time, and that the machine will not work with just one piece of bread.
I’m a geek. I’ve been a geek for a long time (30+ years), and have the buzzword-compliant resume to prove it. I make my living as a geek. My friends are geeks — I spent this weekend with three other geek friends; between us we have better than 140 years of serious geekery under our belts.
Given a choice, we use Macs where appropriate, Linux otherwise. We use Windows when forced to by idiot IT departments. But never as servers, ick.
Not all “techies” hate Apple.
Red John:
Well, they, along with every other company that still does it, should stop doing that, yes?
Anyway, the thing about being told what you can or cannot do — it’s your computer one way or the other. Jailbreak, jailbreak, jailbreak. Yes, you void your warranty, but that’s the chance you take when you do something like that. If you don’t like the conditions placed on you, then even Apple can only slow you down, not stop you. The warranty is your carrot. If you don’t like carrots, though, there really is no stick.
Oh, and can I point out one thing for the historically ignorant? The iPad is, in a very literal sense, the realization of Steve Jobs’ original vision for the Macintosh — a dead-simple, hit-and-run information appliance and workstation. (Yes, he did steal the project out from under Jef Raskin’s nose, but it turns out Raskin’s vision was nowhere near as compelling — did you ever hear of the Canon Cat? If you did, lucky you.) Putting aside the fact that Jobs’ own engineers realized his ambition was too limited (the quick upgrade to half a megabyte of memory was a direct result of said engineers going behind Jobs’ back to make the system expandable), this computer is exactly what Steve Jobs has always wanted to make. Obviously time will tell if it’s successful, and the fact that it’s available in multiple memory sizes indicates that Jobs isn’t completely oblivious to the earlier lessons learned. (I do find Jobs’ obsessive fascination with wireless technology a bit limiting and off-putting, as do many people who have wondered where the USB port is.)
If the iPad serves your needs, great. If not, but you like it in general principle, then send some love to the iPhone Dev Team. If not, go buy a netbook and leave the rest of us alone.
gbyshenk (@224):
No, you quite totally and fundamentally miss my point here. In fact, I think the manner in which you miss my point is a prime example of precisely the point I’m trying to make. You get a bit closer in the following post (@225)…
…but still miss in two important ways: First, even though you (and others in this argument) don’t say so in so many words, the clear implication is that you hold the “techie” position to be inherently superior. Second, you fail to distinguish between product types: Even “techies” only really care about tinkering with a narrow range of things they’re geeked out about. Admittedly, it’s a different narrow range of things for each brand of geek (“radios, motors, … cars, or rockets, or metalworking tools,” as you point out) but even the geekiest tinkerers use the vast majority of manufactured products exactly as they were designed to be used, without ever even thinking about modifying or customizing or updating them. See also my previous anecdote about my nephew and the microwave oven. There are products whose audience is geeks (whether professional geeks or simply lay enthusiasts) and there are other products that are designed for people who just want to use them.
And this gets us back to my argument with your assertion that Apple fans only like Apple products because they’ve been bamboozled by “the most effective marketing.” The problem is that we’re not really talking about marketing here. Yes, Apple runs lots of commercials, and they’re fancy and hip and well produced… but those commercials aren’t aimed at the people you’re deriding as fanboys1,2, and they’re not the reason any of us here think the iPad is desirable or cool. Instead, what you and others are writing off as mere marketing seems to be aspects of product design that are (apparently heretically, from the techie POV) focused on the end-user experience, rather than on sheer technical prowess or flexibility. At the risk of being called a Rachel Maddow fanboy, I urge you to check out the iPad segment from her Friday show (MSNBC makes it a bit complicated to link to their content, but I think this should work; if not, you can find it on msnbc.com). Note that the reviewer from boing.boing talks about getting the operating system out of the way; about seamlessness and “sweet design.” Nobody’s claiming this gadget is breaking new technological ground, nor that it’s massively powerful or feature laden (at least by the techie definition of feature); all the praise has been about the user experience. The problem in this conversation is that those who identified themselves with what you’ve described as the techie POV don’t seem willing to accept that the sweetness of the user experience is any sort of legitimate index of goodness.
Really? Once they were attacked, iPad fans (or prospective fans, I should say) have responded defensively in some cases, and haven’t always made the same argument I’m trying to make, but I don’t recall anybody demanding that you be happy, nor that you like a product you don’t like. It seems to me that what y’all really find irritating is not so much “those who feel the world needs to share their pleasure” but rather those who share their pleasure with the world.
What a fatuous and misleading paraphrase. The Apple quotes in the article are about the same feature that the boing.boing reviewer pointed to on the Rachel Maddow Show: getting the operating system out of the users’ way. That only means “less capable” if you measure capable by counting the number of buttons and knobs… which is precisely how most techies (by your testimony) do measure it. But some of us measure capability by how much stuff we can do… and by how much fun we have doing it. From that POV, extra buttons and knobs that we never touch reduce capability, and removing them improves it.
You may have a philosophical disagreement with Apple about what capability consists of, but to characterize them as disingenuously bragging about making a less capable machine is just bullshit.
First, to be strictly honest, you should’ve indicated that, unlike all the other quotes in your post, this one was not from me. Second, the material you quoted is not an example of what you’re complaining about in 1) and 2) below it (i.e., it does not assert that the iPad is perfect, and despite the fact that it doesn’t actually say “it’s just cool and I like it,” it in no way suggests any unwillingness to do so). Third, I think you’d have a hard time finding actual examples of this complaint. I may have missed it, but I don’t recall even the most ardent fan here claiming that any Apple product is perfect (and, of course, how could we even pretend to think the iPad is perfect, in advance of actually seeing one), and “it’s just cool and I like it” has been the dominant position taken by prospective iPad fans (aside from defending themselves against invidious characterizations from non-fans). This “fanboy” attitude that “irritates” you is a pure strawman, a matter (it seems to me) of the anti-fanboy projection of a basically curmudgeonly peevishness about the fact that some people are happy about something that doesn’t make you happy.
Maybe the word I’m looking for exists and I just don’t know it, but I’m grasping for the inverse of schadenfreude: Instead of pleasure over others’ pain, we’re seeing pain (grumpiness) over others’ pleasure.
I have (amazingly… frighteningly!) more to say on this, but my daughter needs a ride back to school. Maybe later, if anybody’s still interested.
1 I insist on spelling it old-school; deal with it.
2 While I know plenty of people call themselves fanboys in a self-bemused acknowledgment of immoderate interest in something, when you apply that word to someone else, it’s invariably an insult. That’s fine: I’m a big (fan)boy, and can handle being insulted… but don’t pretend it’s not a combative thing to say to someone.
Absolutely they should. But why would I want to spend my money supporting a company that does that and spend my time jailbreaking the thing when I can get one that isn’t closed? A netbook with a real keyboard or, IMO, even an Android phone is a much better product that can already do everything the iPad does. Yet Steve Jobs, Apple, and many of their fans claim that it is a magical device, but no one can explain why it’s magical or why I (or anyone) should buy one over the aforementioned options.
@red John
What arrogance. Who are you to tell a company what and what not to make? It’s a free market. If you’ve got something better that you think consumers will buy then form a company and sell them.
What’s the point in moaning about something you’re not going to buy? Just because it doesn’t fit your perceived needs doesn’t mean it’s not going to fit someone else’s.
Bill, I’m pretty sure I don’t miss your point (in the post above, or the previous), but you seem to insist on reading things into mine that just aren’t there. You say, for example, that
I would be curious to know what it is that I’ve written that indicates such a thing, as I don’t think that I have either said or implied it. In response to your almost absurdly oversimplified bit of pop-psych, suggesting that the reason for disliking Apple products must lie in “cranky teenaged [] notion”s, I pointed out a number of other possible sources of that dislike. I don’t believe that I anywhere suggested that such were superior (inherently or otherwise), but only that they were not inferior as your pejorative “explanation” suggested. I would add, in passing, that your current suggestion that
Isn’t true. Certainly (and as I suggested earlier), techies tend to focus on a limited set of technologies, but (as I also noted earlier) this does not exclude interest in others. Indeed, it is common to find someone who is primarily — say — a computer geek, but who is also involved in cars, or aircraft, or metalwork, or… . Which leads to the third problem. Yes, it is true that techies just “use” most of the items that they have. But because of the way they (we?) think, they can be irritated when someone comes and says “you can’t tinker with this — whether or not they might wish to do so at that particular moment.
I will further add that (possibly because you are reading things into my text) you seem to have missed my point. You say,
Yet, nowhere did I make such an assertion. Indeed, such would be an odd assertion for me to make, given that earlier I noted that “Apple tends to make good products, and their industrial design tends to be very good.” I think that I’ve been pretty clear about this.
What I have asserted is that there is a certain group of Apple fans who think that there is something unique about Apple, because pretty much the only thing they know about technology comes from Apple’s marketing. As you already recognize, there just isn’t anything unique about Apple’s technology or feature set. Further, there isn’t anything unique about “getting the operating system out of the way”; a ‘kiosk’ type device is not uncommon, nor that hard to make — provided that you have a limited number of features to support. Finally, I have seen some reviews praising how easy the interface is, but to my knowledge, they have all been iPhone users, which means that what they are praising is not the interface’s “intuitiveness”, but its familiarity. Obviously, an interface you already know will be easy to use (unless it is particularly badly designed in the first place). Note, also, that I am not saying that this is bad; only that being like other Apple products is not something special.
No, actually, I meant exactly what I said, and to explain why I refer back to my previous comments about subjective vs objective judgments, or about taste. Just preceding the above, you write:
…yet I don’t think anyone in this discussion has actually done so (I haven’t, but I recognize that I may have missed someone else doing so). But what is relevant here is that this is a subjective judgment; a matter of taste. Some people like the design and interface, others do not; neither is ‘better’ in any objective sense (at least on that basis; it is possible for design or interfaces to be objectively better or worse, in terms of functionality and so forth, but we are not here dealing at such a level). As I noted earlier, I have no objection to someone preferring chocolate to my preference of cardamom — unless they attempt to elevate their subjective preference to some sort of objective superiority, in which case I will expect some very good reasons, and strenuously object if they are not forthcoming. Which is not — by the way — in any way to suggest that my preference is objectively superior. Something like this, I submit, occurs in the case of fanbois (for Apple or whatever else — and let me add here that I do not mean specifically to pick on Apple, except as relevant to this context; Linux fanbois are far worse) respond to an “I don’t like it” with a list of supposed “reasons” for its superiority. And here’s the rub: if indeed something is objectively superior, then I should prefer it to the alternatives. In short, by moving the argument from “I think it’s cool; if you don’t then don’t get one” to “it’s a great and amazing thing!”, a person is “demanding that [… I] like a product [I] don’t like.”
All of which means that saying
…is rather beside the point. As indicated in the preceding paragraph, the issue is not whether someone might say “it’s cool” or “I like it”, but where they go from there, and whether that someone accepts their subjective taste or attempts to make it into an objective superiority.
Absolutely they should. But why would I want to spend my money supporting a company that does that and spend my time jailbreaking the thing when I can get one that isn’t closed?
Not to mention that they have actively tried to brick jail-broken products. If it wasn’t for that, I’d consider getting their products to jailbreak and use however I desire. But in the technical arena, that’s what we call a dick move.
Red John:
For what it’s worth, Bill Gates said somewhat the same thing. It came off like Newt Gingrich telling Democrats how to get elected.
And where I exactly did I tell a company what they can or can’t make? And who is Apple to tell me what I can and can’t do with a computer that I purchased and owned. You may love having someone tell you what to do all the time, but some people don’t. And as for your other question, I’m “moaning” because when I tell people that it doesn’t fit my needs because of how closed and locked down it is, they say things like “It’s only closed if you want to make it do something it can’t do” while proclaiming how “magical and revolutionary” it is. How fucking revolutionary does something have to be to play a goddamn flash video?
I’m not a fan of Windows either, and it sounds like he should take some of his own advice.
I absolutely love OS, techno-gadget love hate and other arguments like this.
Flash is shitty on Macs. If adobe made it not such a resource hog on macs they would support Flash on the iPad. Flash isn’t an “open” standard, HTML 5 is. There’s a reason Apple is resisting flash support on the iPhone and the iPad and it has nothing to do with personalities or arrogance. Adobe has been making excuses for years and Apple finally has leverage to get them to improve it. You can easily do video on sites without flash.
Red John (@238):
See, this is a prime example of the cultural disconnect that is, I believe, at the root of me and gbyshenk each thinking the other doesn’t understand his/her point:
You see1 the iPad as a personal computer, and because you see a personal computer as a kind of toolbox, indefinitely reconfigurable to do an indefinite number of things in an indefinite number of different ways, you think it’s a bad personal computer.
But Apple isn’t looking at it as a computer, they’re looking at it as a product… one they’ve designed to do a specific suite of tasks, in a specific way, reliably and easily, and in a manner that delights the user. And even though the suite of tasks is extensible (through the addition of new apps), even there it’s extensible in ways that are controlled, and therefore predictably within the existing user experience.
This is what you characterize as “telling you what you can do with your computer,” and you seem pretty peeved about it. Well, I understand perfectly why the iPad isn’t for you, but I don’t understand the anger: Most consumer products only do the thing they’re do, and only in they way they’re designed to do it; even most things people like to tinker with aren’t specifically designed with tinkerers in mind. Do you get mad because Remington didn’t design their latest shotgun in a way that lets it be used to dig postholes? Why does this particular thing piss you off? Are you afraid Steve Jobs is going to come to your house and take away your hand-built, infinitely tweakable Linux box?
If it’s not for you, just don’t buy one. Why all the zeal to tell people who’re happy to see it that they’re fools? Even if they really were fools, what skin would it be off your damn nose?
1 Forgive my presumption in telling you what you see; if what follows doesn’t reflect you personally, though, it certainly does reflect others who say many of the same things as you.
gbyshenk (@235):
It is (to use a word you seem to be fond of) objectively certain that you’re missing the point I intend to be making. I suppose I have to own part of that as ineffective communication, but I think it’s really more about us talking from fundamentally different understandings… which is what I meant before when I said your missing my point was practically an example of my point.
I said you hadn’t said it in so many words (it’s right there in the quote), but it is implied in the whole premise of your argument, which takes it as a given that the iPad is “less capable”… which is only true if there’s a single objective standard for capability… and that the correct objective standard is that of the people you describe as “techies.”
Then, too, I took your constant use of a clearly derisive term to identify the non-“techie” position, along with your specific assertion that you find the other side “irritating” as hints that you hold the techie position to be inherently superior. If that’s not what you think, at least be aware that you’re giving off that vibe.
You’re strangely fixated on that phrase, but you’ve misread the context in which I used it. I didn’t characterize the techie POV as a “cranky teenaged notion”; instead, I used that phrase parenthetically by way of acknowledging that my nephew (an actual cranky teenager at the time, though he “go’ betta'”) was an extreme example. The very thing that made the anecdote about him a good illustration of that type of argument (i.e., that he stated such an extreme version of it, and so bluntly) also made him an outlier within the type, and I was simply trying to be clear that I realized that.
But I’ve heard plenty of people who are not cranky teenagers make more adult, moderately phrased versions of essentially the same argument: That it’s a shame when people who don’t know what’s happening inside the machine blithely use the machine anyway. The particular anti-iPad argument that’s based on its closedness and lack of techie-friendly features is a subspecies of this position: The designed-in ability to make an indefinite number of open choices would, to at least some extent, force people to in fact make those choices… whether they want to or not. By criticizing the iPad for not having the features techies want, that side of the argument (note here that I’m deliberately making a general point, not necessarily aimed at anything you, personally, have said) is effectively saying that users of information devices ought to be techies, at least a little bit, and implicitly criticizing the fact that they’re not.
And, for the most part, don’t want to be. I heard a study recently (unfortunately, I can’t quote it, but before everyone starts shouting Citation, please!, let me just say that I’m not lying about having heard it, and I’m recalling it in good faith, and if that’s good enough for conversation’s sake, to hell with it)… anyway, I heard a study recently that said, by a large margin, the biggest complaint about personal computers is that they’re too complicated. I couldn’t believe it myself, considering how effortlessly I use computers (and computer-related devices) to do damn near everything I do… but then I thought of all the people — smart, well-educated, competent people — who really are stymied by stuff that those of who live in (or, in my case, in the suburbs of) Geekopolis absolutely take for granted. They don’t want to get better at navigating the interface (nevermind maintaining it); they want the interface to get better at not requiring much navigation.
The argument for highly customizable, open systems is sometimes framed in terms of personal freedom, but if what we really want is free, equitable access to the wonders of the Digital Age, what we need is not more flexible, and therefore more complex, systems for accessing information; instead, we need radically simpler devices. People who can’t confidently navigate even a simple Mac OSX setup will be able to use the iPad to get stuff done. The tech-centric griping about it is essentially an elitist position: The Digital Age should be reserved for those who can hack it. (Mind you, I’m a big fan of elites, and you won’t hear any of the anti-intellectual populism of the last election coming out of me… but it’s a bit ironic [no really, Alanis] to see a pro-elite position dressed up as an argument for global freedom.)
Nobody that I know of doubts that techies (as you describe them) dislike Apple products for reasons that are, from their own POV, perfectly good. The question is why it bothers them so much that other people like Apple products for their own reasons.
Now I’m going to depart from point-by-point responses, partly because it’s late, and partly because I think your emphasis on subjectivity and questions of taste underlies a great percentage of our disconnect. While I’m not quite sure why questions of taste and other subjective reaction shouldn’t be an important part of evaluating a consumer product (when was the last time you read a car review, for instance, that didn’t say at least something about how “fun” the car is to drive?), I don’t think the difference between the techie and non-techie reactions really is just a matter of taste in the way you mean: We don’t simply like different things, in the way some people like green and others like blue. Instead, we have different goals.
Take your example about chocolate and cardamom: On its face, a preference for one or the other looks like a simple matter of taste, purely subjective. But if I’m trying to make chocolate mousse instead of curry, chocolate is objectively better than cardamom, regardless of anyone’s taste. (Cue 15 Pharynguloid recipes for chocolate mousse with cardamom in 3… 2… 1….)
One group in this conversation wants to know how many things the machine can do, and how many ways you can change what it can do; the other group wants to know what it does, and how beautifully it does what it does. We’re not really disagreeing about the answer; we’re asking different questions.
And when you find it “irritating” that others have been duped into overenthusiastically accepting the “wrong” answer, what you’re really doing is denying the validity of (or perhaps just ignoring) their question. And if that doesn’t amount to an assertion that your parochial position is inherently superior, I don’t know what would.
I’m sorry, but I cannot see how you reach your conclusion here.
It is true, I submit, that ‘less capable’ (when referring to things like physical properties, at least) is something “objective”. Whether some device can read some sort of file, or can write to some sort of device, or any one of a number of such things is a matter of fact, not of opinion, and is therefore, not subjective. To be sure, the value any individual might place upon any such capabilities might well be subjective, but that is a different sort of thing. If device A can do more things than device B, then device A is “more capable”, as a matter of plain objective fact. Someone might nonetheless prefer device B, if they don’t care about the extra capabilities of device A, an find device B more pleasing in some other way.
I think that just writing the above makes clear that what I’ve argued does not imply that I “hold the ‘techie’ position to be inherently superior.”
Further, your following claim:
…seems to be based upon your own misreading, in turn based upon a false dichotomy. I have not at all suggested that there is a singular “the non-‘techie’ position” [emphasis added]. Rather, I have derided one particular non-techie position among many others. I submit that this is very plainly suggested by my (non-derisive) comments about other happy Apple users, and reasonable (non-fanboi) responses to those who find the iPad less than appealing, which would be nonsensical if the only non-techie position was that of the fanboi that I deride, as well as being made explicit when I noted that I was referring only to “a certain group of Apple fans”.
In short, I submit that I did not at all state or imply what you claim, whether “in so many words” or otherwise. Rather your claim seems to be based upon what you are reading into what I’ve written. Perhaps it would be useful to pay more attention to what I’m actually saying than to some “vibe” you might be getting.
As for the matter of the “cranky teenaged [] notion”, I submit that I highlight it for exactly the same reason you chose it in the first place — although perhaps turned on its head, in that the fact that you think that it was “a good illustration” indicates to me that it is “a good illustration” of your attitude. I will add, here, that I didn’t even argue that your position was wrong, but only that it was incomplete. And I note that you continue to do so:
The “you should know what’s going on under the hood” may be a factor (among others) for an argument (among others) against the iPad, but it is hardly “the” only argument against its closedness. Indeed, the argument that you place in the mouth of the techie is one that I have not seen anyone actually make. Even the most extreme cases that I have seen do not in any way suggest that everyone must make particular choices, but only that prohibiting choices is a bad thing, and likewise forcing people to not tinker.
I skip over most of your discussion of “simpler devices”, in part because I don’t actually disgree with most of it, and in part because it is irrelevant to what I’m arguing, which is the lack of uniqueness of Apple products and the iPad. It is certainly at least arguable that better access is needed, but there is nothing special about the iPad in this respect: there have been various “simpler” computing devices produced (and available!) for more than ten years! The iPad is very much not a “groundbreaking” idea in this respect. [Well, one side technical (techie?) comment: it is no challenge to make things simple by disabling anything that is not simple; the challenge is to make simple things simple, and complicated things possible.]
As for the matter of subjectivity and taste, you seem to be arguing exactly the same as I’ve already done. If you wish, you can say people are “asking different questions”, but this is just saying that people value different things differently. As I said, some people aren’t interested in having more capability, and happily choose a less-capable, but more fashionable (or elegant, or whatever) sort of thing. Further, doing so is not (necessarily) being “duped”, and I have nowhere stated or even suggested that choosing in some way is such, nor even made a negative judgment on choosing that way. What I’ve objected to is the ‘fanboi’ attitude that cannot rest simply with the judgment that “it’s cool and I like it”, but must instead make ridiculous claims about the uniqueness of their given choice, or how “groundbreaking” it is (when in fact, it is not).
In closing, I would note only that I have — as suggested numerous times already — not claimed that my (‘techie’) position is inherently superior, per se, but only that it is superior to the ‘fanboi’ position. Note that this is very much not to assert its superiority to other non-‘techie’ positions, as such would just as silly as asserting tha my choice of cardamom ice cream was “superior” to someone else’s choice of chocolate or strawberry.
A couple of relevant links:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/16/20100406/ttc-ipad-jailbroken-in-less-than-a-day-6315470.html
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-%26-technology/apple-to-fix-malfunctioning-ipad-customers-201004092628/